My Dear Pen

Tucked away in my pocket, snugged inside the dark corners of my bag, bundled up together in between my books, pressed against hard table and a pile of papers, in whatever situation and circumstances, you have been there for me. Ever ready to give shape and legibility to my thoughts. Ever eager to articulate my emotions. Ever willing to present my limited knowledge. Every anxious to give shape to my ignorance. You are there forever. 

You have come in many forms and incarnations. You have come with pistons, with bubbles, sacks and tubes. You have come with split tips, ball-tips, carbon tips and everything in between. Whatever the form, you have been there to help me learn. You have been there to complete my homework, to prepare reports, to meet deadlines and to ink corporate deals. 

Whenever I feel like hiding my vast ignorance and highlight my tiny horizon of knowledge, I use you, ostentatiously placed in my front pocket, possibly in more than one form or color. Like a naive man with golden tooth deliberately grinning to show it, I open you, close you, rotate you in my fingers, place you in front of me, feign writing time and again, offer you to others, just to make sure to use you to enhance my limited personality. 

Whenever I have a whim, I rub you vigorously against the rough paper, pressing you with my cruel fingers into it. But even then you revel and magically create a vivid picture of my thoughts on it. You make that paper worthwhile. You make me contended. But in the process, you run out of your own vital fluid. Sometimes, you run out of fluid and I have to do away with you. Much lesser number of times, I happen to re-fill you but that is becoming rarer and rarer. Your new forms do not allow me to reuse and refill. I simply have to take a new form and incarnation of yours. 

I am sometimes lazy to find you, fill you and get a paper. As a result, I start banging with my ten fingers on a keyboard. I might create more words and sentences but I do not get the same intimacy as I get when I navigate you on a paper. That is a different level of excitement. 

While I was young and was using you more to be a able man, I had vigorously debated that you are much more powerful than any weapon in the world. You can create war. You can sign a deal to make an end to war. You can marry two people or you can divorce them. You can create poems, novels, songs, musical notes and even declarations of hostility. You bring hearts together. You tear them apart. You give shape to emotions and feelings. You make sure a literary genius lives on ages after his or her mortal remains are gone. You make sure a composer's work keep enthralling music lovers eons after the composer is gone. 

My dear pen, as time passes, I see you increasingly overwhelmed by the touch screens, keyboards, voice to text converters, smart assistants, automatic navigator and electronic mails. Still, like a candle that can light a thousand more while a fluorescent electric lamp cannot, like a fragrant rose that can liven up a room while a thousand fake ones cannot, like a centuries old masterpiece painting that no digital art can ever emulate, you are above all of them. You are the one who worked so hard since time immemorial that all these exotic technologies, products and facilities could be imagined, worked upon and realized. They are all here, trying to overwhelm you and make you obsolete. But, without your hard work, they would not be here. And, they might evolve and even perish some day but as long as the quest for knowledge and human creativity persists, you shall be relevant. 

Thank you on behalf of all of the humankind that believe in the power of a pen. 

Friday 07 December 2018 (14:23 NPT)