23 Jan 2024 - MGOL - World Handwriting Day

23 January - World Handwriting Day – a day to highlight the importance of writing in long hand, specifically using a fountain pen on paper to explore and reaffirm the joy of writing by hand.

The day is in remembrance of the birthday of John Hancock – the first person to sign the famous American Declaration of Independence – a day earlier celebrated only in the USA – now a worldwide phenomenon.

John Hancock - known for his stylish handwriting and large signature

(One of the American Founding Fathers. Governor of the state of Massachusetts.
b. 23 January 1737 d. 08 October 1793)

I, all my life have thrilling memories of putting my thoughts on paper using a fountain pen. I was a regular writer – only for myself  – during my academic education and my corporate job days – a practice that slowly diminished once I got into music – full time, thus destroying my handwriting completely – a only glimpse in the first photo on the top, written today – showing – what has remained of what used to be much much better than this!

This Handwriting Day – I redeem my pledge to write regularly again and urge everyone to explore this almost meditative experience. The creation and writing for this blog site is a step towards that.

Today, I also salute the person with the best ever handwriting I have seen in my life, who is still going strong. How I wish I could master even 10% of his skills. His handwriting is typically non conformist – he makes and lives by his own rules – a trait, that genetically got into me too. I salute my father – Jagadishdatta Latay.

The man with the best handwriting - I have ever seen in my life - my father - Jagadishdatta Latay.

Hats Off to you Dada! Whatever appreciation I get for my handwriting - all credit goes to you!

His is a ‘Handwriting’, a conveniently confused notion being good handwriting = calligraphy or writing calligraphy style. So one may mostly hear all around – only calligraphers have a good handwriting. No Sir/Madam!!!  – Handwriting and Calligraphy are two separate things. You write a sheet of paper in less than 3 minutes – that is your real everyday handwriting! So here is a salute to the best handwriting that I ever saw in my life and continues to be a benchmark of best handwriting.

A song lyrics from the immortal Sound of Music - written in his music book.

A song lyrics in the Devanaagari script - the script used in Sanskrit - from which is derived my mother tongue - Marathi - a famous song by Shahir Honaji Balla - written in his music book by my father Jagadishdatta Latay.

This one is in Bangla, Devnaagari & Roman Bangla
- a song from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali.

Happy World Handwriting Day to you... May you enjoy and continue to write in long hand and put your thoughts on paper – in a world where typing, tapping, emojis and emoticons are becoming the norm.

- Dr. Salil Latay

Pune, India

23 January 2024, Tuesday

First published in 2022...now a re run.

Image used from the Internet. All rights and credits belong to the respective owners and creators. I or this blog site do not claim any right, ownership or credit on the material used here in this post. I - Dr. Salil Latay sincerely appreciate and thank everyone associated with the material used here.