A Pen-Friend

It feels so wonderful!!!
We were not allowed ink pens in school till class VI. I still remember, I’ve never been so anxious to pass an annual exam as I was in class V. From pencil to pen, - the first step towards adulthood!! It was so cool!!!

But soon enough, I was disillusioned.
Style always comes with a price tag.

As it was, in terms of handwriting, I always ruled among top notch abstract art. But, with the new ‘Artex’ pen, I saw I was giving even Dali a run for his money. It was like a nightmare!
Once it so happened that I went to my class teacher to plead for some marks in class test. But even after 20 mins, I could not convince her that what I wrote on that piece of paper was really the answer to question 1 (not right or wrong, just that it was an answer).
And the worst part was, I could not be sure myself!!!
Oh! How I missed my pencil days back then!
This went on for two years and then we were allowed ball pens. I was so relieved, that I celebrated by emptying my whole bottle of ink on my archenemy’s schoolbag.

But, it has been thirteen years since. My handwriting has improved, and so has my maturity. I have felt that writing can come from within, not answering any question.
Now, today, as I was browsing through an ‘Office Linc’ store, I just scribbled my name on a piece of paper with an ink pen, and was stunned!!
The same rustling sound, the same faint silky feeling, the same hovering drop of ink at the end of a thought….like a long lost friend.
It was a time when I learnt about dreams, a time when I had the courage to reach out and hold them by reins.
Can’t say, I shall use it a lot from now on. In the age of computers, MS Word no doubt is a lot more practical, cheap, eco-friendly and above all, legible way to communicate in writing than the old school reams of foolscap paper.
But….the question of legibility arises only when there is a responsibility to make sense to someone else. At my moments of loneliness, at my moments with myself, when I will need to write only for myself and not for anyone else, it will remind me of a friend who shares the thoughts I haven’t told anyone or never will, thoughts that forever hover in that drop of ink, just at the brink of being written down.
I’ll know, I just need to reach my shirt pocket.