The Hand That Speaks For You

Here is a love story from my university days. A woman patient falls for her doctor. She writes him a letter to have him out for a dinner. The doctor replies but, as is usual with them, writes in a very clumsy handwriting, which the lady is not able to decipher. Still shy of calling the doctor, she hits upon an idea. She takes his reply to a chemist and asks him to help. The chemist gives a close look to the letter, blinks and reads again. Then, he asks the lady to wait for a while, leaves for the far end of his shop and comes back with a bottle and tells her to take a spoonful before every meal.

I regret the comic and somewhat sad end to her romance, but also wonder why doctors write in that illegible scrawl. Is it because of the lack of beauty and romance in their life or is it because they are secretive about their trade? If it is the latter, I can understand, because the lure of love and romance, I guess, spares none. Did they write their love letter in their youth in that same obscure hand? I mean in the days when letter-writing was the norm for affairs amorous. Letters were then supposed to be mirrors both to a bleeding or a brimming heart. Written not only in a neat hand, they also had images of hearts, flowers, dainty fingers, coy eyes drawn in ink or imprinted faintly on the paper (sometimes perfumed) they were written on. Not only words, poems or couplets too written with a flourish in different shades of ink with impressions of tears, blood and lips adored these letters to express the tumultuous pangs of a pining heart. Such was the romance of letter-writing in those days. That is why Jagjit Singh bewails

Tere khushboo men base khat main jalata kaise

Pyar men dube hue khat main jalata kaise

Tere haathon ke likhe khat main jalaata kaise

(How could I burn the love-laden, perfumed, handwritten letter of yours?)

That was a time when handwritten documents were valued, prized and preserved – love letters were one of those. Though one of the unique qualities of written word is that it is autonomous – it leaves the writer behind, yet in writing by hand the writer in some way accompanies the text. A handwritten note is generally doubly coded. It conveys, of course, what it says, but at the same time it speaks a lot about the person too. In letters written by hand, whether designer, effusive or measly worded, you can partly see the writer.

That is why schools in old days emphasized so much on good handwriting. Making young learners develop a neat and clear hand was a part of the moral and technical training – to pay earnest attention to the minutest details. I have not forgotten an incidence from my school days when sitting on the front desk I was taking dictation by our teacher. To my utter shock I found a sudden rasping slap landing on my left ear. I didn’t know that my teacher was watching me write. On the four-lined copybook, I had put the capital letter ‘J’ on the lower three lines instead of the top three. My teacher could not bear to see his front-row learner making such a serious mistake, hence that sudden blow on my face. To this date, I have not forgotten that rule and many other etiquettes of good handwriting.

In those days, writing by hand was a kind of art that we learnt from the start. Teachers and parents would hold hands to teach us the art of print or cursive writing. In my school, the copybooks or takhtis (wooden tablets) of students with good handwriting were circulated in every classroom to set an example. And, the principal, I remember, would himself offer a nicely chiseled reed pen and an inkpot to the best student as a reward. The school drawing subject included lessons in fancy lettering, where a variety of fonts, bold, script, shaded, 3-D or outlined were taught for calligraphy. Writing with a flare, what Ghalib calls ‘shokhiye tehreer’ was an act of art.

I can see that handwriting can tell something about its writer – their concern for the reader, their level of patience, their sense of beauty and exactitude; but I was somewhat amazed at the length of the nexus that some analysts found between writers and their handwriting.  According to a study by National Pen, the handwriting of a person can tell as many as 5000 different personality traits. For example if the size of your letters is small, you are shy and studious; if they are large, you are outgoing and outspoken; if average sized then you are well adjusted and adaptable. Similarly, other features like spacing between letters and words, the slant of the letters, rounded or pointed shape of letters, narrow or wide looping of letters like ‘l’ and ‘e’, heavy or light pressure of the pen, quick or slow flow of writing, all can tell a lot about your mind, attitude, character and outlook. Isn’t that incredible?

The weirdest of these predictive features is the way people shape their dot on the letter ‘i’. if it is placed high then you have a great imagination; if it is on the left then you are a procrastinator, if it is on the right then you are organized and empathetic; if it is in the shape of a circle then you are a visionary and if it looks like a slash then you are self-critical and impatient. The study also confirms that doctors use patient’s handwriting to diagnose diseases like high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia etc. Handwriting reading in a way joins the speculative sciences like palmistry, astrology and pulse diagnosis.

Notwithstanding our doubt about its accuracy, it must be admitted that handwriting can speak a lot about the person behind it. Its double coding makes it a more alive and intimate way of communication. In a romantic way, handwriting makes both the speech and the speaker visible.

With the advent of keyboard that personal touch to writing has been lost. People don’t anymore write love missive with their hand or send condolence messages to their dear ones on chipped postcards or write wedding invitations with kesar marks. The digital fonts and styles are uniform, bland, unambiguous and unromantic. On top of it, the social media, in its very format, makes you chat with unknown people who you can friend and unfriend anytime. The person behind the digital text is nameless, genderless, stateless and by virtue of it ‘characterless’.

It has silenced the hand that used to speak for you.