Why writing is not writing in its true sense anymore....

When I was in school, my English teachers considered my handwriting to be very graceful and fluent. With a lot of passion, I learnt both Calligraphy and Cursive writing and practiced it for hours together. I used to take pride in my handwriting when it was appreciated. Writing with a Parker pen or a Fountain pen gave me a feeling of high, when the tip of its nib smoothly traversed through the intricately arranged thin fibers of the paper. As I wrote poetic odes calligraphically, I sensed that the loquacious movement of my pen was akin to that of a ripple on the surface of the water. It felt like beautiful thoughts ooze out of my heart to slip down through the ink of my pen only to be etched elegantly on to the wafer thin pages of my book. But before I got to the final version of my poetry on the book, I used to write and re-write on piles and piles of papers to get its sense and essence right. To this day, I preserve those papers. For, they remind me of my passion towards writing. There was an unknown psychic connection between my soul, the pen and the paper.

But now after all these years I do not remember what my hand writing looks like on a paper any more. Anybody who would want to study my personality through my handwriting might have a tough time to judge. For, I do not write with the same authority and frequency as before. My handwriting has become wobbly, flowing uncertainly underneath my unsteady fingers. This is not as a result of any injury or accident. It’s just that I do not have the same need to use a pen anymore. There was a time when I had a pocket diary and a pen wherever I went. But now I have a laptop and an Iphone to accompany me instead. I still use a pen but its purpose has merely been restricted to a signature on a cheque or scribbling a few words here and there. Even a signature seems to have become electronic.

MS-Word or a note pad on my laptop (even on an IPhone or an IPad) is doing the job of what a note book did some years back. The only difference being that instead of holding a pen for support, my fingers are at work all by themselves typing on the keyboard of the laptop or the touch screen of my IPhone. Now I feel that beautiful thoughts ooze out of my heart to slip down, not through the ink of my pen but through the typing fingers of my hand only to be edited later on to the flat LCD screens of my laptop. The only advantage has been that of saving the consumption of paper as I can edit innumerable times that don’t cost a thing to get to my final version. While writing and typing has become almost synonymous because of technology, it has made writing no more writing in its truest sense.

The advent of technology has brought in so many changes that we can hardly fathom the effects that it carries to further generations. There might come a time when our future generations might laugh at the very idea that their ex-generations were using a pen to write. They may also come to know about pens - like Dinosaurs- had existed sometime back in the history until they were useless (I meant extinct).

Certainly a bleak future invites those legendary Parkers and Fountain pens.

In, for yet another away white wash???

Yes I would think so.

As they say history repeats itself. After the world cup triumph (a distant memory now), the team visited West Indies. There we scraped through to a series win against a week team ranked eighth. Then we visited England to get white washed in all formats. England returned to get the same treatment in one-dayers. Then West Indies visited us to give another series victory (no doubt in any body’s mind) for us. Now India is in Australia for a 4 match test series where it is 2-0 down already and slipping down the barrel very swiftly towards another impending away white wash. I hope we wont create a dubious record of sorts of most away consecutive test match losses. India has lost 6 away test matches on a trot including the losses in England.

Look the way the cycle going round and round. When we are at home we are like predators hunting down the opposition. But the scene is a reverse on a foreign turf. Most often than not, we are the one hunted. One would have attributed the reason for the debacle in England to injuries to our major players and fatigue after incessant cricket over past year. But now there is no excuse for the below-par performances down under. It’s only the attitude of the players on the field that needs to be questioned than anything else.

Before we began the tour, everybody talked about this being the best chance of beating Australia in their own backyard for the first time. But the hunter has been hunted. Australia showed how gritty they are even with an inexperienced bowling line up. Ponting and Hussey - whose heads were in the line of axe after their poor show before this series - were completely out of form and heading for an early retirement. But see what our bowlers have done. They not only helped them get their confidence back but also got them back in form by giving them good practice.

Our Bowling have always been questionable (experienced or inexperienced) in away conditions. But now I am afraid we cannot put our money on our famed batting line up either. Every now and then against a quality attack we are as week and meek as a pack of cards. Sachin, Dravid and Laxman – Considered among the greats of the game- haven’t lived up to their greatness tag. They are not even inspiring the young guns to make runs. So far the Australian trio - Ponting, Hussey and Clarke - has out run the Indian trio in this series. I can just hope against the every possibility of an impending white wash.

Can anybody bet why can’t there be a white wash?