Handwrite me a letter, please

Like my peers, whose hearts have been throbbing for more than 50 years, I sometimes wonder when my own heart will call it a day and stop throbbing. I often fancy traveling back to my childhood to review what all my life has been like. Poignant moments reminiscing about the past nowadays recur quite frequently, and even more so now as I have become a gentleman at leisure and splurge my time on hobbies like listening to music, window-shopping in malls and flirting with the idea of becoming a writer. No more is my time and space cluttered by the hustle and bustle of busy life. Among my golden boyhood memories there are a few amusing anecdotes which of late are repeatedly coming back vividly to my senses, with all hues replete with their original fragrances and excitements.

Three of my dearest objects that are permanently blended with my childhood memories are one red fountain pen my father bought me when I was a student of high school, one empty HMV phonograph needle box with a hinged lid that bore that famous picture of the dog raptly listening to what I could only suppose was his master's voice coming from a gramophone, and one metal nutcracker. Among the three artifacts, I am still retaining the nutcracker that I have inherited from my father. But my fat red pen and the little needle box are lost for ever. I would have paid any amount of money if someone could somehow hand me back my two boyhood gifts: the red pen filled with royal blue ink of the 'Parker-Quickink' brand and the tiny tin-box with the dog on the lid.

Among many things and habits, which are fast vanishing from our life in the whirlpool of modernity with computers and keyboards whirring and clicking, billions of cell phones buzzing with text messages and the nerds gabbling in net chatting, is the cool sight of a fountain pen beside a bottle of ink placed on a writing desk and the tradition of penning an elegant and polite letter in softie handwriting. Nothing can express one's admiration for another like a handwritten letter. No love e-mail, text message or cell phone call will ever be as fondly and carefully bundled into a memory box as priceless treasures and savored for years to come.

I feel pity for the boys and girls who are now deprived of the heavenly pleasure of writing by hand, that we used to enjoy in our salad days. Handwriting a letter with a fountain pen is a serene sensation that slows the soul and gnaws the mind into a contemplative state when thoughts reflected and words chosen seamlessly convey the truest nuances of emotion. That conveyance is not at all possible for a mechanical keyboard that vomits the desiccated words on a monitor that glares with punishing lights.

My son is way taller than me and extremely busy working in North America. He cannot afford time even to talk to me over telephone and I have to leave recorded voice messages in his answering machine. Hardly have I received his words either in texts in my cell phone or in emails in my laptop during the last few months. Still with some trepidation, I have dared handwrite a letter to my son with a footnote: "Handwrite me a letter, please, Raakeeb", carefully folded it, inserted it in an envelope, glued the envelope, stamped it and posted it at the GPO for its long travel to Toronto as what is now called a snail-mail in this age of e-mails.

Maswood Alam Khan

maswood@hotmail.com