I is for Ink...

Zainab’s new toy is a MS Word document. Whenever she sees me typing away, she asks me to open a new page for her.

“Mamma, I want to write my name.”

She then gets comfy and locates Z on the keyboard and presses it. Her forehead creases when she sees the tiny z.

“Mamma, make it big.” So I increase the font size from 11 to 36.

She tries again... “z.. a...”

The creased forehead returns. “Big A please, Mamma.”

I turn caps lock on.

She then proceeds to type the rest of her name. Then she types randomly, hitting some Ls and Xs and Gs, and tells me she is writing a story.

Yesterday, as I watched her perform this daily ritual, I felt depressed. I should be teaching her to hold a pencil and write the alphabet. And here she is aping her parent’s version of writing. Whatever happened to good old ink and paper?

My trusty journals, the ones I kept under lock and key, and lovingly wrote on every night had magically transformed into a web log. A blog. This blog. My thoughts and hopes and dreams spilled, for the whole world to read (I wish). Yikes.

When I started this blog in 2009, I just wanted a platform where my work could be viewed easily. Read my first few posts and you will see how painfully journalistic I thought my posts were going to be. Slowly, I learnt to be a blogger and just went with the flow, pouring my heart into my posts.

Do I miss the actual writing process, with ink and paper? Hell no! I have no idea how to spell check, hyperlink and google for information with a pen and paper.