Ink Pens…

Writing is one of the joyful activities in our daily life and we are so used to it that we seldom stop and think about the complexity involved to execute the process of writing. Fine muscle control over the relevant muscles in our dominant hand honed in with years of practice allow us to effortlessly translate our thoughts into the words that we see on paper. This process has become & second nature for us, requiring almost no active thought.

However, try to pen down a few words with your non dominant hand and you will soon realise how difficult it actually is to write something legibly at all.

Feedback in the process of writing is very important. The present yet subtle scratching of the tip of the nib while traveling across the paper is registered by the nerves in our fingertips, which is used by the brain to automatically adjust the pressure and angle of the nib on the paper allows us to write smoothly.

A ball-point pen is the smoothest gliding across the paper but, to me at least, the feedback is almost non existent. This absence of the scratchiness of the pen tip makes writing a very dull affair. A fountain pen on the other hand has a distinctive scratchiness from the nib, no matter the smoothness of the nib used or the quality of paper being written on. Every pen and paper combination throws up different characteristics. Experimenting with these is interesting and and spices up the writing experience. We do not eat the same food every day, we change our menu and recipes so that the food items appear interesting and remain palatable; then why should we settle for the each same old writing experience every day with a ball-point pen, when a fountain pen provides so much variety.

There are advantages to using a ball-point, no doubt, but the discerning writer will always prefer the fountain pen for the simple joy of writing. For the situations when using a ball-point is almost unavoidable, they are ubiquitous enough to be found readily at hand, but I for one staunchly refuse to make my daily writing a monotonous affair when my job entails writing in one form or other for nearly half of the workday.