Is the Pen Still Mightier than the Sword?

Recently, I attended a public meeting and, as usual, returned home with a conference bag. Inside were the programme details, a writing pad and a pen.

It was a nice pen—not an ordinary ballpoint casually picked up and put into a plastic packet. It was neatly packed, felt good in the hand and looked rather special.

But what caught my attention was not really the pen itself.

It was the feeling it brought back.

For a moment, I was reminded of a time when a pen was almost an extension of myself.

When I came home, I found myself rummaging through one of my shelves. I discovered quite a collection of pens—some gifted to me, some branded, some picked up at meetings and conferences over the years. There were more than I had imagined.

They were lying unused.

Some had been sitting in my pen stand for so long that I could hardly remember when I had last used them. They seemed to be waiting patiently for me, while I had gradually moved on to keyboards, mobile phones and screens.

That realisation made me a little nostalgic.

A pen had always been part of my life, especially since I became a journalist.

I cannot remember going to a reporting assignment without one. A writing pad or notebook and a pen were as essential as my press card. Sometimes I carried two pens, just in case one stopped working. There was always something to write down—a name, a quotation, a telephone number, a date, a fact, a remark or simply something that might become important later.

In those days, I wrote almost everything by hand.

There was a certain rhythm to it. Sitting somewhere during a meeting, listening carefully and scribbling notes. Writing quickly when someone said something important. Underlining a name or a figure. Turning back through the pages of a notebook to find something I had written days or even weeks earlier.

Not only as a journalist, even during school to college to university, we scribble down the lectures. I was quite fast, I remember. Some of my class mates used to copy my notes later.  

The notebook often became a kind of second memory. Oh I remember the “autobiography” that was passed on from one friend to another - and everything was handwritten ! 

And the pen was the instrument that recorded it.

Those were also the days when being a journalist meant carrying around quite a few things—newspapers, notebooks, press releases, scraps of paper and, of course, a pen. There were no smartphones to record everything. There was no instant search at the touch of a screen. If you wanted to remember something, you wrote it down.

Sometimes I still miss that simplicity.

Technology has changed the way we write and the way we remember. Today, I can type something on my phone much as fast as I can write it by hand. Notes can be stored, copied, searched and shared within seconds. Even signatures are increasingly becoming digital.

The pen has slowly, almost unnoticed, been pushed to the margins.

Yet it has not disappeared completely.

I still reach for one when I need to scribble something quickly. I use a pen and notepad for little calculations, reminders and stray thoughts. Sometimes, when I am trying to put an idea together, writing it down by hand feels different from typing it on a screen.

Perhaps there is something about handwriting that makes the thought feel more of one's own.

And that may be why I felt that little tinge when I received that conference pen.

It brought back something I thought I had almost forgotten.

Looking at the collection of unused pens at home, I realised that each one probably has a small story attached to it. A conference attended. A meeting covered. A gift received. A journey made. A particular period of my working life.

They may no longer write much, but they have become little reminders of another time.

Interestingly, pens continue to be given away at almost every conference, seminar and public event. Even in this digital age, organisers still put a pen into the conference bag.

Perhaps there is a reason for that.

Perhaps we are not quite ready to let go of the pen.

It also reminded me of the much-reported incident involving King Charles III, who became visibly frustrated when a pen leaked while he was signing an important document—the Accession Proclamation following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

I remember thinking about that incident and smiling.

A leaking pen could still command the attention of a king.

Maybe the pen is not entirely powerless after all.

For me, it represents something more than a writing instrument. It takes me back to my early years as a student, as journalist, to notebooks filled with hurried handwriting, to reporting assignments and meetings, to pieces of paper tucked into bags and pockets, and to a time when putting words on paper was a very physical act.

Today, much of what I write exists somewhere inside a computer or a phone. It can be edited without leaving a trace, deleted with a click and stored somewhere in a cloud that I cannot see.

But a handwritten page is different.

It carries the marks of the person who wrote it—the pressure of the hand, the hurried words, the crossings-out, the arrows, the underlining and sometimes even the ink stains.

Perhaps that is why I still find it difficult to throw away old notebooks.

And perhaps that is why I cannot quite part with my pens either.

They may be lying unused now, but they are not entirely forgotten.

So, is the pen still mightier than the sword?

I don't know.

Perhaps in today's world, the pen has another battle to fight—not against the sword, but against the keyboard, the smartphone and the endless glow of the screen.

For someone who has spent much of her working life with a pen tucked into a journalist's bag, I would like to believe that it still has a little power left.

After all, some things may become obsolete without ever becoming meaningless.

The pen, for me, is one of them.