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I still write by hand, and many people are surprised when they hear it. Their eyes widen in disbelief.
“You mean you still write by hand? Does anyone write by hand these days?”
I feel embarrassed. It is my failure. I learnt to write by hand as a child, but I never managed to move beyond it. I could never become comfortable writing on a computer.
It really is my failure. I never learnt to keep pace with modernity. I remained behind. At times, I regret it. I have tried several times to master computer typing, but each time I have eventually fallen back into my old habit.
I learn a little and then lose the rhythm. My hand longs to hold a pen. When I sit down to write on a computer, I cannot express my thoughts as naturally as I can with a pen. I spend too much time searching for letters on the keyboard. By then, my thoughts become jumbled.
What can I do? I return to handwriting. Perhaps I will never fulfil my wish to become comfortable writing on a computer.
People of my generation now belong to an earlier era. Perhaps there is little new left for people like us to do. That is the way of the world. Older generations gradually move into the background while younger people come forward and change things.
They adapt quickly to new technology and modern ways of life. Their creativity and innovations continue to surprise us. They discover new paths and set out along them.
People from the older generation often struggle to keep pace. I am one of those who have fallen behind.
Of course, I have seen many people of my generation who are highly proficient with computers. They type page after page at remarkable speed, stay up late using Facebook, write on social media, read newspapers and books online, and keep pace with the younger generation.
I feel proud of them. They have managed to adapt. I have not. The failure is mine.
People of our time learnt handwriting by writing on slates. We used a thin wooden stick, rather like a pencil, to write on the slate. A piece of wet cloth was always kept nearby. After writing the letters, we would wipe them away and write again.
Then came paper, exercise books and pencils. Later came ruled notebooks. At first, we used the same kind of ruled notebook for both Bangla and English. We used blank paper for mathematics. Later, a different type of ruled notebook appeared for English letters.
But none of those ruled pages were allowed in examinations. We had to write on blank paper.
There was another rule, too. Every day, we had to write one page in our Bangla and English classes. Before the teachers entered the classroom, the class captain would collect our handwriting notebooks and stack them on the teacher’s desk.
The teachers would examine the notebooks carefully and award marks. There was even a competition over who could score the highest out of 10.
That was how we became accustomed to handwriting. I do not know whether such practices still exist. I suspect many of them have disappeared.
Today, I hear that various institutions have emerged to teach children handwriting. There are even specialised centres dedicated to improving handwriting. Many children no longer learn to write in the way we did. They are growing up in a world shaped by computers and digital devices.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Many things change with time, and we have to adapt.
One day, I asked a child to write the Bangla word for “mother”. The child first wrote the vowel sign and then the preceding letter. I was surprised.
Is this how children are now learning to write? Or has this particular child simply learnt to write that way?
I observe the lives of today’s children and often talk to them about different subjects. I rarely see a child without a mobile phone. Many remain glued to their screens.
We often hear of accidents involving people who become distracted while using their phones. Newspapers have even reported cases of people being hit by trains while absorbed in their devices.
Mobile phones have become a source of intense dependence for many people.
Communication has become remarkably easy. Young people no longer need to write love letters. They can simply send a two-line message to express their affection or love.
How easy their lives have become. Sometimes I envy them.
In our time, expressing romantic feelings could take days. You liked a girl — but how would you tell her?
Families in the upper and upper-middle classes in cities often had telephones. We did not even use the word “landline” then. A telephone was simply a telephone.
Perhaps the girl’s family had a phone while the boy’s family did not. Post offices also had telephones that people could use by paying a fee.
A boy might spend eight annas to make a call, only to find that the girl’s mother or father had answered. Frightened, he would immediately hang up. In many families, girls were not allowed to answer the telephone.
So how could a boy tell the girl he liked her?
There was only one way: writing a letter.
To impress the girl, young people would fill their love letters with romantic quotations and lines from famous poets. They would look for blue paper to write on. Some would tuck rose petals between the folds.
Some letters even carried the marks of tears shed while writing them. Others, in playful mischief, would wet parts of a letter with their fingertips to make it appear as though they had cried over their love.
Once, one of our mischievous friends tried to convince his beloved that he had written a letter in blood, using a cut finger like a pen. In reality, he had used red nail polish. The girl caught him as soon as she opened the letter. She had no difficulty recognising the dried nail polish.
Then came another challenge: how to get the letter into the girl’s hands.
No matter how many excuses we came up with, finding a way was difficult. Sometimes a household servant could be persuaded with the promise of money to deliver the letter.
But the letter might fall into the hands of the girl’s mother or father before it reached her. They would reprimand the girl, track down the boy and complain to his family.
There would be family disputes, community mediation and all sorts of commotion.
But could all that stop love?
Lovers found ways to overcome family and social obstacles. Countless stories, novels and plays were written about such experiences. Many films were also made.
Letters occupied a huge place in our lives.
Parents anxiously waited for letters from sons living abroad. Wives waited for letters from their husbands. Children waited for letters from their fathers.
When would the postman arrive? When would a letter from a loved one arrive?
Parents and wives would read those letters again and again. Good news brought immense joy; painful news could bring tears.
Countless poems and songs have been written about letters. There was even a genre known as the epistolary novel, in which a story unfolded through a series of letters.
Buddhadeb Guha was among the last writers of such novels. Letters also feature prominently in many novels by Humayun Ahmed.
Today, epistolary novels are rarely written. The age of letter writing has quietly disappeared from our lives.
People no longer write letters to one another by hand. They send short messages on mobile phones and perform in seconds what once required a carefully written letter.
Letters were closely associated with post offices and postmen. Postmen would ride bicycles to deliver them. In remote areas, they would travel on foot.
Now we rarely see postmen. The red postboxes have disappeared from many places. Post offices have gone digital and taken on an entirely different form.
Middle-class and affluent homes once had letterboxes. Postmen would drop letters into them, and family members would collect the mail after waking up.
Letterboxes still exist in many countries, but handwritten letters rarely fill them anymore.
Once, our lives were filled with a certain gentleness, a deep sense of affection and emotion.
If the son of a neighbouring family lived abroad, receiving his letter brought joy not only to his family but also to people in the neighbourhood. Good news brought excitement; bad news brought sorrow.
That was who we were.
And now?
Do we even know what is happening to the person living next door?
Someone may die in a neighbouring flat, and the body may remain there long enough to decompose and spread a foul smell, yet we may not even try to find out what happened.
This is not only a problem in cities. The same sense of distance can be seen in towns and villages.
Many of us have become increasingly self-centred. We often struggle to look beyond our own lives.
Modernity has opened many doors before us, but it has also closed some. The gentle light and fresh air that once entered through those doors and windows seem to have faded.
We no longer express our feelings as openly as we once did. Although we live amid constant communication and activity, many of us have become increasingly isolated.
We do not always share in another person’s happiness or sorrow.
Our fountain pens became ballpoint pens long ago. Yet we are gradually forgetting how to write.
Many people now pay less attention to handwriting, spelling and sentence structure. If this trend continues, there may come a time when handwriting becomes little more than a fading skill.
We may even struggle with something as simple as signing our names.
We can address this only through awareness. Parents and teachers have an important role to play.
Every technological change brings a period of adjustment. Some societies adapt quickly; others need more time.
Perhaps we need time.
But we will surely adapt.
People must sometimes return to the fundamental beauties of life. We need to reconnect with our roots and traditions.
Perhaps, in the midst of all our technological progress, we will once again discover the simple beauty of a pen moving across a page.