Between pen and pleasure

the laptop just shrivelled up on me like gladioli in a vase of water after a week. still, life must go on and all zat jazzmatazz. no computer, no cry. there's still the good ole ballpen that can be put on paper, the heirloom parker, that'll permit me to write on regardless. forget that schoolday quink ink pen that smudged the fingers which couldn't be washed-'n'-scented by all the perfumes of araby. so have returned to the ballpen. shouldn't have because, at the end of the day, couldn't decipher my own handwriting, the squiggles resembling a mess of spaghetti swimming in tabasco sauce. which logically brings me to the subject of handwriting. like face-readers, palmists and astrologers, there are experts who can tell what you're all about just by glancing at how you cross your ts and dot your is. a millennium ago, one such expert claimed that i was a very mentally-balanced sort of fella going by the fact that my writing always tilted towards the right and also because my rs were consistently legible — even though the ns, on occasion, could be mistaken for ws. aberrations, the expert smiled charitably, were permissible. hence, it was something of a shock to discover on returning to penmanship that i no longer tilt towards the right. indeed like don quixote now my writing gallops helter-skelter, tilting away dizzily at windmills which could be anywhere from east to west to north by northwest. in a word, directionless. the experts are absolutely right actually. because on returning to the penful stage, it is can be deduced that those who're blessed with handwriting of style-'n'-substance — plump or lean, floral or simple, micro- or macro-scopic — are special. extraordinary handwriting makes for extraordinary people. towards this theory, i offer the most striking examples i know of people whose writing reflect their personalities. topping the list, there's the late satyajit ray. his signature was towering, the 's' standing there on paper like an invincible sentinel followed by an uncharacteristic flourish right till the surprise twist in the end — the 'y' being ever so quiet and understated. remember a recipient of a ray letter, remarking, my gawd, the signature looks as if it was embroidered on paper by his very own charulata. next: amitabh bachchan who appears to be partial to black ink and possesses more quills and pens than wordsworth probably. neat, every a-b-c is clearly sculpted on paper, almost as if he'd studied the art of calligraphy. wonder if the writing artistry has been inherited from his litterateur father harvanshrai...or whether it has reached perfection with practice. either way, i've always stored that invitation to his 50th birthday, with a personally written inscription. that was almost a decade ago, and the ink hasn't faded. santosh sivan's handwriting is pretty close to his painterly visuals. there's high drama in the way he signs his name while the accompanying text is written in the manner of miniatures, aesthetic and muted. the asoka director-cum-cinematographer promises to sketch in charcoal and crayons, but hasn't fulfiled that waada to date. behram contractor's notes on a reporter's pad were like lazy rambles through the streets, just four-or-five words occupying a page. hardy busy, hardly bee-like...yet those shorthand scrawls were like brush strokes, gentle and still authoritative. from his jottings, wannabe reporters imbibed the art of brevity, editing the chaff away from the wheat right there during the beat, be it at the police commissioner's monthly conference or at a rally addressed by a foghorn politico. journo vidyadhar date's handwriting is something else — the letters shaped like the great pyramids of egypt at times and humble hutments at others. tough to decipher, the scrawls are worth preserving, since they're unlike anything visible on planet earth. lastly, shabana azmi's handwriting is very mughal-e-azmi — ornate and yet down-to-earth. read any of the speeches she has drafted with a blotty ballpen on ruled paper, and you're convinced that anarkali would have written her anti-emperor akbar petitions like this. alas, on re-looking at my own return to pen-'n'-paper, it's quite indecipherable...like me. so will someone volunteer to re-activate that laptop please? pronto. khalid.mohamed@timesgroup.com