Written word and spoken word

“बोललेला शब्द हवेत विरून जातो आणि लिहिलेला शब्द गिरवला जातो (Spoken word goes away with wind and written word is retraced!)”

The above sentence was said by Naidu sir some days back and it has triggered many thoughts in my mind! Truly the written word has this tremendous power. The words are very powerful things in fact and when they are written they become permanent in a way!

Let’s see what Nayana (Dr. Abhay Bang) shared with us (students of Nirman) in his Chocolate Parcel dated 1 August 2013 below.

“प्रिय युवा मित्र,

शब्द’ हा माणसाने लावलेला मोठा शोध. जीवनातील एखाद्या वस्तूला किंवा अनुभवाला प्रतीक रूपाने शब्दाद्वारे प्रकट करणे ही माणूस प्राण्याची प्रचंड मोठी बौद्धिक उडी होती. त्यामुळेच भाषा, विचार व संस्कृती शक्य झालेत. शब्द प्रथम केवळ मौखिक होता. त्यामुळे शब्दांमधून ज्ञान पसरण्यावर मर्यादा होत्या. नंतर गटेनबर्गच्या छपाईमुळे तो शब्द छापता यायला लागला. त्याबरोबर शब्द व माहिती पसरण्याची गती व व्याप्ती हजारो पटींनी वाढली. वाचन व वाचक वाढले. आज आपण जे आहोत, जसे आहोत त्यात छापील शब्द या हनुमान उडीचा मोठा वाटा आहे. गेल्या वीस वर्षांत शब्दाने कागदाचा आधार सोडला, व तो इलेक्ट्रॉनिक झाला. तो इंटरनेट, कॉम्प्युटर व मोबाईल फोनची स्क्रीन याद्वारे प्रवाहित झाला. याचे परिणाम किती मोठे व व्यापक होतील हे तर अजून आपण पूर्ण बघितलेलेच नाहीत. रोज हे क्षितीज पुढे सरकते आहे. जगात इतकं लिहिलं गेलं, लिहिलं जातंय, पण त्यातला अब्जांश देखील आपण वाचू शकत नाही. मात्र ‘वाचाल तर वाचाल’ हे शब्दशः खरे आहे. निर्माणमधील युवा मित्रांनी काय वाचावे? पुस्तके तर जरूर वाचावीत. त्यांची चर्चा आपण शिबिरात करतोच. पण सोबत छोटे, सारगर्भ विविध विषयांवर सहज काय वाचावे? माझ्या वाचनात अलीकडे आलेले असे काही निवडक लेख दर महिन्यात तुम्हाला पाठवण्याचा विचार आहे. दर महिन्यात हे छोटेसे ‘चॉकलेट्सचे पार्सल’ तुम्हाला पाठवीन. बरेचदा चॉकलेट्स इंग्रजी असतील. चॉकलेट कसे वाटले? त्यातील विचारांबद्दल प्रतिक्रिया? जरूर परत पाठवा.

तुमचा

नायना (Dr. Abhay Bang)

संलग्न: चॉकलेट पार्सल” (Link)

Today in the morning, on this friendship day, I was listening a song named Maze Gaane. It is a song written by Balkavi and its beauty is incredible. Whoever knows Marathi knows that they are listening to some beautiful and sacred poem! (Link) “Words should be such that they will create springs of thoughts!” (शब्द असे असावेत कि ज्यांनी विचारांचे झरे निर्माण व्हावेत.) – Bhalchadra Nemade (I have heard him say this in a TV programme.)

These words of song खामोशियाँ आवाज है from movie Inkaar never fail to take me on a long journey of thoughts whenever I listen! (Link) There is more version of this song in English and lyrics are so great that I would request you to listen to it whenever you will get time.

The opportunities for writing were very less in past but “today every person is a broadcaster” as mentioned by Prasoon Joshi. No doubt that words are important but they are more important when they are written. Javed Akhtar ji said in a recent interaction with Symbiosis that in past it used to take about ten days to receive an answer to our letters and today we can send message to anyone by WhatsApp in seconds (Link). He further added that the speed is good but the speed should not be gained at the cost of depth!

We know that there are ‘WhatsApp disasters’ now a days! We all must have witnessed this or that WhatsApp disaster. Hence this medium also should be used very carefully. In WhatsApp disaster again, it is ‘written word’ that creates problems! We must assume that whatever we are writing, once it goes in pubic domain, it becomes permanent!

Today we can read about thoughts of great people even if they are not present with us only because of this process of writing. Either they have written it down themselves or someone else might have written their words. One might say that it is same case with spoken words because the same person’s saying can be recorded by means of audio and video. Though it is true that audio and video recording also is a kind of permanent record, the instruments of recording are costlier than the instruments of writing and it takes more space to store audio and video records. More bandwidth is needed to transmit it. Hence spread of audio and video records will be limited always in comparison to written records. If I will talk the words I am writing now a WhatsApp audio message, the size of recording will be in some MBs and if this same message is sent as a text, it will be in some KBs.

Hence one should be very very careful while writing anything is the conclusion to which I have reached by witnessing many disasters! One should be very careful otherwise also about words (spoken or written) is true but one should be more careful especially about written words is what I understand from the words said by Naidu sir which I have mentioned at the start of this blog post.

Thanks a lot for reading my loud thinking about written word and spoken word. I want to thank Naidu sir for giving this interesting and important thought. Please feel free to share your experiences about this tremendous power of written word with me. Happy friendship day to you all!

 - Dr. Abhijeet Safai (2 August 2020)