Give me a pen to write

It was a usual day. After the off-day sumptuous meal, I was lying down. Santosh was typing in his laptop the lengthy report meant to go on print the next day. The playlist of MP3 files he made in his laptop were all my favourites. It always was. Whenever he opens the song files, his choices would obviously be my favourites.

All the songs were very nostalgic.

Suddenly I felt like scribbling. I searched out my diary from under the pile of clothes in the suitcase. I started writing, and after a few words I noted that the speed is lost. My handwriting was terrible. Suddenly I realised that it’s been almost a year since I wrote Malayalam. Gosh! Time does fly.

My handwriting was not that great in school, but I could maintain a legible fare at least in my answer sheets. The realisation that my handwriting was bad came upon me when I was in class IX. I had read somewhere that handwriting indicates the personality of the person, and a steady handwriting, with no right or left slant showed an upright, smart personality.

All of a sudden, the alphabets I scribbled in my notebooks seemed to be in an inebriated condition! They were so slanted towards right. I began using a fountain pen from then, with a visible improvement in my handwriting. I used that till my plus two days.

I never maintained my notes clearly in school. As a result, writing was limited, except for the language classes and math. And during the exams, my hands would hurt after finishing two papers. We had two hours for a paper, and there were two papers a day.
During the plus two classes, I chose Malayalam as my second language. There was much writing involved, though not as much as in the high school classes.

Then came college, and I ditched Malayalam. The additional language I chose was Hindi, so no more Malayalam writing. But in the second year, I began writing Malayalam with a newfound vigour. Reason? Letters!

Berny, one of my intimate friends, left for Coimbatore and started her graduation anew. I had made sure that she’ll write to me the very first week, and she did. Sot it was only courtesy that I had to give a prompt reply. And she wrote back the very next week. The communication continued, with at least two letters a month, till I joined journalism classes.

That was her last year of graduation. Both of us were bombarded with assignments, and the number of letters dwindled to one in two months. Guys back in Kollam and abroad were ever reluctant to write, even though two of them were in a pucca nostalgic set up in Dubai. (After all, distance is the mandatory ingredient for writing letters, even love letters to the girl next door!!) By then, our professor declared a pen-down for us. He said he was fed up with or handwriting and wanted our assignments in print.

The next big writing was the first placement test, which was held in our institute. Then the one in my newspaper. After that, there was absolutely no writing, not even a weekly scribbling, only typing. I could type out pretty quick now. But I can’t write quickly, neatly. It’s high time I start scribbling. I don’t want someone to look at my handwritten copy and say, “What is this Chandu?”