A lesson I remember from my elementary school was
about the battle between the Pen and the Sword.
Which is stronger?” asked the teacher.
“The sword” was the unison reply of my 3rd grade classmates. But the teacher said, “you all are wrong, the
pen is mightier than the sword”. Slow in
learning, I could not make any sense of the question. How can there even be a war between a pen and
a sword? And, even if people want to
fight with such weaponry; who idiot will think of picking a pen to fight
against a man wielding a sword? Maybe
this is what we call an elementary level of thinking. But war between these two objects seems to
know no bound; decades, centuries and even millennia have seen them fight
tirelessly and the sword eventually surrenders to pen but only for a time to
regain its valor.
People and civilizations under the the reign of
pen seem to flourish in all their forms and fashions; art and literature appear
to enjoy the most as they become the channels for human expressions of creativity
and ingenuity inspiring the human imagination to go further into the discovery
of the natural world of science and technology.
Ideas are freely expressed and disputes are settled by debating the
merits and the demerits of both the sides; no wonder the people of Athens still
bear the testimony for such a life.
As good as it is to live under the reign of pen;
the pen is also very naive and vulnerable that it begins to believe it can
sleep at night without locking the door; in its ideal world are no thieves. When the dogs bark in the neighborhood at
night, it assumes that a cat must have been running after a rat only to realize
in the morning that the whole town was robbed and ransacked by some barbarians wielding
the sword from beyond the yonder. Realizing
the gravity of the situation, it rushes to the city square, calls on the
scribes to come to Areopagus to discuss the tragedy. Alas, no one comes! There is no sign of life in any of the houses
of the scribes. Hurriedly it rushes to Areopagus,
only to see the sword waiting for its arrival. The loyal politicians of the city were now
standing to testify against the pen; crowd was solemn and silent. The pen could not believe its ears what the
politicians were spewing out of their lying mouths. The sword gave the verdict; pen must be executed. Climbing to the gallows, pen tried to see if
there were any scribes in the crowd down below; in the far corner with heads
covered like women were a few of them secretly wiping their tears. With sadness but no regret, the pen put its
head across the beam with neck sitting on it and the axe fell. As if something divine had happened, darkness
covered the land for a long long time.
One of the surviving scribes by the name of
Plato went to look for an Ideal Republic in which the pen and the sword would
unite in peace and serve the people with the best of their ability. The other by the name of Confucius went to
look for an Ideal Prince who would listen to him in creating a perfect nation
where justice and freedom would rule for the prosperity of the people. But neither of them could achieve their dreams;
they both failed miserably. And there
came another scribe by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, warning the rest of them
that the problem was not with the pen or the sword, the problem was with the
heart of man. Unless a man be born again
and become like a child, he will always be a victim either under the brutality
of the sword who thinks that all those who disagree are guilty deserving death or
the naivety of the pen who thinks that those who disagree also belong to universal
brotherhood and should be allowed to express their disagreement in anyway they
feel like doing it; even at the point of wielding the sword.
No comments:
Post a Comment