There was a time when handwriting meant a lot to people. Ancient Roman handwriting styles included Roman cursive, and the more calligraphic rustic capitals and square capitals, the latter of which forms the basis for modern capital letters and was used in stone inscriptions. In India, the inscriptions from the Harappan civilisation and Indus Valley civilisation give us some serious insights into our past.
What you see above is an example of classic American business handwriting known as Spencerian script.
Gandhiji was one of the many great men to lay emphasis on good handwriting. But despite the success of Lage Raho Munnabhai, nobody seems to acknowledge the beauty and grace of good handwriting anymore. The beautiful calligraphic script that people once prided themselves for have now turned into clumsy scrawls, as you can see below:
When I was younger, I won an award for good hadwriting for two consecutive years. The school I went to back then, i.e. Birla Vidya Niketan in New Delhi, even organized annual handwriting contests for young children. Back then, I never realized the importance of this, but today I know why a hand-written letter looks and feels so much better than an e-mail written in a computer-made font.
There are many people who say that e-mails and computers are just a way of saving paper. We don't want our beloved trees to be felled, do we? But such notions take the attention from more obvious causes of deforestation such as large-scale industrialization in forest areas, wastage of paper and aversion towards recycled paper. If schools made it mandatory for students to use recycled paper notebooks, a lot of paper could be saved. But no. Teachers are way too bothered about the relatively darker shade of recycled paper. So, now most people think that e-mails and phone texts are the solution to deforestation (seen that Idea ad with Abhishek Bachchan as a tree?). But this has led to the disappearance of the traditional culture of handwriting. Today, most teenagers are more comfortable writing e-mails than letters. What if you have a relative living in some part of West Bengal which does not have internet connection? What do you do in such a situation? Break off all ties with them because picking up a pen and writing a letter is too cumbersome for you?
Today, we don't know what our best friend's handwriting is like. Gone are the days when people wrote emotional notes to their loved ones. Today we have generic smileys which convey emotions. Whether or not you are truly smiling, the same smiley will appear on the computer screen. The art of expressing one's emotions through writing has been on the decline because ready-made 'emoticons' are just a click away.
Did you know how much the disappearance of handwriting has hurt the art and business of penmanship? In the United States, starting in the late 19th century, there were cries that handwriting was being neglected due to the typewriter. By the 21st century, blame was being attached to the use of computers. Linked to this decline in penmanship has been a decrease from two hours per day in penmanship instruction during the 19th century to less than an hour per semester in 2007.
And what about our history? How will our future generations (if they ever get a chance to grace this planet given the constant threats of the end of the world being presented by movies like '2012' and 'I Am Legend') ever get to know anything about our lives? We have not made strong monuments which will stand the test of time. Not only that, we won't have inscriptions and scripts written by us which give a detailed account of our lives and practices. What do you expect them to do? Access our Facebook or Twitter page thousand years from now? But won't our internet accounts expire by then and won't our posts and blogs become irrelevant once new technology comes in?
Thankfully, there are still some people who understand the value of good handwriting. Throughout most British oriented countries such as Nepal, Competitions are held almost everyday as penmanship is an important asset of every student. These competitions carefully analyze the handwriting of the competitor and chooses the one with most ease, neatness, and beauty.
Next Valentine's Day- a festival which has lost all meaning and become a commercialized affair- try writing a handwritten note to all the people you love. Next Diwali, make a card and just write 'Happy Diwali' inside it. Next Christmas, pick up a sparkly red pen and make a 'Merry Christmas' note to your friend. Write a letter to your friend living in another city and experience the excitement of waiting for a reply. I assure you, these events will become just a little bit more exhilarating.
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