The End

De-accelerate. It’s not a word you expect to encounter in the pamphlet of one of the best writing instruments available today,the Mont Blanc classic Meisterstück 149. For,the idyll of writing — drawing ink into the suction pump,wiping the nib clean,carefully touching pen to paper and producing a flourish of beautiful text — that Mont Blanc espouses has succumbed to the prevalent logic of this day and age: speed and utility. Today,few wield the pen with the savoir-faire of KC Janardhan,a handwriting expert whose studio in Fort,one of the oldest parts of Bangalore overlooking Tipu Sultan’s summer palace,is packed to the brim with precious objects of penmanship. “In handwriting,you cannot cut corners. Research suggests that an adult can write no more than 18 to 23 words in legible cursive in one minute,but at the school level,children are expected to write much faster,leading to wavy,mis-formed letters,” Janardhan says,dipping a nib with a reservoir just large enough for the ink to last three or four words at a time,into a bottle of Copper Burst by Private Reserve.

In India,as in the rest of the world,handwriting has fallen into an ugly rut,riding on misinformed practices and styles. Besides,just as the fountain pen has given way to plastic ballpoints claiming to glide on paper,computer literacy has changed the pedagogy of the written word. “Handwriting skills are not stressed as much now,in keeping with the requirements of this generation,which will be using computers a lot,” says Melissa Arulappan,a Bangalore-based communications consultant and mother of two. While Arulappan doesn’t write much,her 16-year-old daughter Riya prefers to do most of her writing on the computer.

For some of us accustomed to using Microsoft Word and Blogspot,our handwriting is a memory shrouded by sepia-tinted letters and musty exercise books. For L Venkatesh,an IT engineer from Bangalore,writing only a few hundred words by hand since graduating over five years ago led to an embarrassing predicament. One day last year,as he unwittingly walked into a bank to write a cheque,he was told his signature did not match earlier samples. “I hadn’t written a cheque in years; I usually make credit card payments and bank transfers online. I had to sit there on the couch for half an hour and practise my signature,” he says. Ask him to copy the coffee shop menu on to a notebook and he writes slowly and self-consciously,joking that if only he had been asked to “write” a program instead,he’d have finished by now.

Anita Bhatia,a 22-year-old from Bangalore,who has worked at a call centre for the past two years,knows well what has happened to Venkatesh. It only takes a few months to “forget” how to write,she says. “I used to keep a diary in which I’d write at the end of the day — at least two pages. Then I stopped. Now,I am struggling to prepare for the entrance exam to a prestigious masters’ course in Economics from Delhi University,” says Bhatia,who quit her job this February to pursue academics. “One can begin small,by writing personal messages on cards,making to-do lists by hand,and noting down ideas as they come,” she adds.

When you aren’t used to writing regularly,a three-hour-long exam and the pressure of asking for “extra sheets” to fill can be intimidating,says VR Prasanna,CEO and programme director of Sikshana Foundation,an NGO that works with 400 schools in rural Karnataka. “In our surveys,we found that due to lack of handwriting practice — these children come from poor families that cannot afford notebooks — they could not answer all questions in the given time. In fact,Class VIII children took over 35 minutes to write one sheet of paper,” he says.

Paradoxically,even as handwriting is sidelined by digital fonts and several schools have made cursive writing optional,centres have cropped up in cities across the country promising “perfect handwriting” in a matter of months. One such school in Mysore,run by former artist S Narayan,trains 300 students a year in cursive writing. “I used to teach drawing in schools,where there were complaints of bad handwriting. So,I started teaching basic handwriting eight years ago,” says Narayan,who uses finger exercises to teach handwriting strokes to adults and children aged three and above. Vinotha Rani,a 38-year-old teacher who runs Blooming Kids,a play home in Mysore,says such coaching centres fill a major gap in the system,especially in Montessori schools that don’t focus on handwriting before the age of five. Rani herself is Narayan’s student. “Despite being a teacher,I don’t write enough. I decided it was time to practise,” she says.

In adults,handwriting can be a reflection of one’s confidence in expressing oneself,says Janardhan. “If you haven’t written consistently for ages,ultimately if you are asked to write,you may develop what is called writer’s cramp,where your fingers don’t move at the speed you want,” he says. Most of his students today — admittedly fewer than eight years ago — are adults who found themselves incapable of writing fluently and legibly. Janardhan’s academy,The Connoisseur’s Quill,teaches the italics style,which he says is superior to cursive writing in terms of readability. Cursive writing evolved from the highly stylised 16th-century Copperplate script and still retains some of the anachronistic curlicues that we hated as children. Italics,often mistakenly called the print script in schools that recommend the style,is less demanding and can be rendered as a running script subject to certain limitations.

On the fringes of the crusade for handwriting improvement is a growing class of practitioners called grapho-therapists,who believe in,or at least make money off the controversial science of predicting one’s character traits from one’s handwriting and changing the latter for personality enhancement. In a classroom on the first floor of a corner building in Sanjay Nagar,Bangalore,Imran Baig,in-charge of the children’s programme at the Handwriting Institute India,a private company,says,“We don’t expect children to connect more than three or four letters. Pure cursive is unnecessary. Instead,we bring in positive elements of grapho-therapy.” Twenty-odd children are hunched over their desks,plying their Parker pens along curls and strokes in their level-one workbooks. Some look bored,others are chastised for talking in class. “When the child comes to us,we take a sample and analyse his or her handwriting and then slowly change it,” says Indumati,a handwriting analyst and instructor at the centre. “This child,for instance,has come here for the first time,” she says,picking up Harshik’s practice book and carrying it to her office for analysis. “He has a 50-90 degree slant,common among introverts. The size is good,and there is very little pressure. His letter formation suggests he is not emotional. We will slowly work on changing the slant and improving his personality,” she says.

Imran and his brother Rafiullah Baig,founder of the institute,believe in the “transformational potential” of their method. “Your handwriting tells a lot about you. For instance,if you cross your T’s at the top,it means you are confident and balanced,” says Rafiullah,who is often seen on local TV,and consulted by the government on forgery and handwriting analysis,as well as students looking for a quick-fix personality makeover; they are now set to become certified handwriting analysts,all crossing their T’s at the top with a short line balanced equally on both sides of the stem.

Banners with pictures of Rafiullah smiling dot the institute. “Happy evening,” the students chant in chorus,and go on to share stories of their personal growth and transformation. It’s almost like a cult,one that hides behind a veil of smiles and projected confidence. “I stopped caning children once I changed my handwriting,” says Srimathi Ramani,a teacher at Aurobindo Vidya Mandir,Rajaji Nagar. “I have become more confident and social,” Vidya,a 19-year-old student of engineering,chimes in. For those of us who are busy emailing,texting and tweeting,this miracle — like most fads,an import from America — has safely passed us by. But the next tragedy won’t: the death of handwriting. n