Not everyone takes to writing the same way. To some, writing is just an inconsequential gay inconsequential past time that should be done only if it is absolutely necessary that you do. At the other extreme where I stand, writing is everything – ‘everything’ to the point that I sometimes wonder if humans would one day evolve into beings capable of communicating only through written messages. In today’s world, in today’s commercialised scenario wherein it is mandatory that you belong to some network or the other in order to set your sights on success, connectivity is everything. A simple idea like Twitter is now being touted as the next big thing for small businesses. In such a world, how can anyone not consider journalism as an important business? I say that in the context of most of us taking it for granted. We all expect the newspaper to be splayed on our doormats at 6 in the morning, but there’s a group of people toiling all day to make that happen. And that’s always the feeling that gets to me when I read the paper: you can only truly appreciate something when you know how hard it is effect it. I always thought playing a guitar would be cakewalk – but that was before I cut my fingers on the strings trying to strum a stupid little tune.
Anyway, that’s my take on writing. And whenever I write, it feels like something so magical, you know. I guess I’m one of those people on this planet who think writing is magical; since everything is some form of an art or the other, there must be at the least a few people who think it is magical! But let me tell you, writing is more magical than you can think it will ever be. We can either speak or write, and for an inorganic form of communication to take up half of everything being communicated is a conquest of sorts. Ever since little scratches were made on stones, man has come a long way in refining language and the scripts that go with it.
Taking a little detour, I’d like to tell you how hard it is to create something. For example, suppose that you’re using a car. Any car that runs on petrol or diesel has a minimum of 40,000 nuclear parts in it. And all parts are part of a network of pipes, tubes, cooling systems, and so on and so forth. Nothing is attached freely to anything. In building such a car, what would you build first? The engine? What about the power supply? The battery? What about the power supply again? The dynamo? What about the wheels that power it? The power transfer mechanism? What about the engine? And that is where a bit of research was initially involved: in trying to figure out what went where. Once that was finalised, a manufacturing plant was set up and an assembly line was modeled after the designs that stemmed from the research. However, if you noticed, all this happened because everyone who worked with mechanical engineering knew where they were headed. They all wanted to build a machine that would work like the latched-D-gate: with a constant input, there would be a specific output.
But in languages, that is not the case. All though we might have inadvertently triggered the factors that led to evolution taking shape, we never were and never will be in a position to control and guide the pathway of evolution itself. It’s something like a Mobius strip: make on and then try drawing a line which is completely blocked from eyesight in a two dimensional frame of reference. Some part of the line will still be visible, although it is drawn only on one side of the paper. We can make a Mobius strip, but we can’t hide the line. If we made a normal strip and made the line disappear, it would become development – or making the car in other words. When we started off, we never knew where languages would end up. But we kept improvising it because that is what we thought was favourable. If we are to progress this way, we’ll never be able to get to the ideal language – but ideal languages don’t exist (the very thought of it is absurd!). And so, here we are. We didn’t know what our goal was, other than the fact that we knew we waned to simplify things; we only did what we thought was right. Therefore, there is nothing to say that languages would have ended up like this whether we wanted it or not. It only leads us to the fact that there could have been any other language in the stead of English. And that is what makes the languages we have today more beautiful! There could very many more, but it was these that took form and shape and materialised in the form of images in our heads.
And that is also what makes writing more valued, rather more worthy to be valued. Now, writing is a tool used to convey information through the simultaneous structuralisation of perspective, grammar and logic – the end result of which constitutes a sentence. With these elements, we know for a fact that we have conveyed something or the other; what I’m saying is that such realisation is also very miraculous. Just by improvising on something, we believe that we are making it simpler. However, since we know no other alternative that might exist in its absence, we don’t have any options. And dangling at the end of this feeble thread lies the future of every language.
And what lies at the other end? What lies at the end which is pulling it higher and higher? The need to communicate as well as to picturise. Speech was the first mode of communication – it was created in order to generalise some ideas and actuate conformity in order to fortify any efforts made towards a single goal. Writing had to take form in order to preserve any such communication. It delivered repeatability and timelessness. What was before dust in the wind or sand on water is now an engraving on stone. And how something as inanimate is capable of projecting so much imagery is something else altogether. And with these many uncertainties involved, don’t you think writing is a magical wand that can perform magnificent feats?
The answer to that question is what divides the readers from the writers!
Clathration Therapy 