A piece of Heart in blue ink

OUT OF THE BLUE — I WRITE

Today out of the blue I just felt like writing. You may say I write everyday; what’s so special about today! It’s special as I write with my pen on a paper and not on a computer screen. So what if it is a Sony Vaio, brand new with gentle crisp clear keyboard!! Who can beat the feel of writing on a paper!!!

A white-ruled sheet smelling so fresh and new, a nice blue ink pen smoothly flowing on the mirror paper. Okay as you can see in the picture here … there are a few mistakes but it’s been long since I last wrote on a sheet of paper. Such a good feeling I must say.

A long time back I was advised by someone that I should write on paper first and then type it all but me being lazy avoided it totally. Hee Hee…! Today while making a test paper for a child I picked up the pen and then somehow I could not stop. It’s a good feeling.

It’s a bit nostalgic as it takes me back to my school days when we used to write daily. Long long essays and compositions, how I used to detest them at that time and found it so very difficult to write so many words. Gosh…! What a herculean task it seemed then.

Those were days when we had no gadgets to help us out. Days when there was no Google [1] or Wikipedia [2]. How did we manage? I often wonder. Oh yeah! We did have libraries and encyclopedias [3] to help us and we knew our spellings very well. We had dictionaries to consult and we knew how to use them. Unlike today where so many short forms and so much slang are used that our spellings have gone for a toss and how we struggle with them.

Those days when there were no cell phones and networks … no chargers… no video games… no vie’s or Psp’s.

Today I’m surrounded with so many chargers and wires. It is a humongous task to keep them separate and to be able to identify which charger is for which gadget. Phew…!!! And another huge task is to remember to keep all these electronic thingies charged.

Where do we head with all this? Now we live in a concrete world which has also become an electronic jungle full of wires and switches and gadgets everywhere. We do not remember any phone numbers as we don’t have diaries any more. We have only names in the contact list which may be deleted any second and we would be left with no numbers, no addresses, no contacts as well. Letters have turned into e-mails and meetings for business. Alas…!!! How dependent we have become on technology and how rusted our brains are becoming.

On the other hand technology gives us the boost and is taking us places. We have rockets to the moon and are digging to the core of the Earth. We have cell phone networks in the remotest places and a surgical robotic hand doing complex surgeries. So actually it is very debatable as to how good or bad is technology for us in this century.

But what is important is that I can still smell the paper I’m writing on and how happy it makes me…!!! Whatever will happen as the next generation grows up who can say. Will there be any paper left or will it become extinct like the leaf scrolls our ancestors used to write on with the feather pens. Who knows …. !!!

Till then just out of the blue – I write.

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[1] Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was first incorporated as a privately held company in September 1998.

[2] Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites.

[3] The Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that after 244 years, dozens of editions and more than 7 million sets sold, no new editions will be put to paper. The 32 volumes of the 2010 installment, it turns out, were the last. Future editions will live exclusively online – a victim or beneficiary of the digital age!