Turn your ugly handwriting to a beautiful art

Dying skill

An artiste takes classes to improve handwriting of students and also expose them to calligraphy, writes T R Sathish Kumar

At a time when handwriting is fading away with rampant use of computers in all professions, Kala Spandana at Mahila Samaja, Lakshmipuram, in Mysore, is training people — from children to professionals — in handwriting and calligraphy.

A Sathyanarayana Rao, S Narayan for his students, a commercial artist, has been training hundreds of persons in the art of writing, over the past six years. Earlier, he said, he was conducting classes at his home. He used to teach drawing and painting and also had a small establishment — Shilpa Arts on Main Street near Chikka Market.

The classes are held from 4 to 6 pm at Mahila Samaja on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Some of Rao’s students now are LKG students while some are PG students, a few KAS aspirants and software professionals.

He said he thought of starting handwriting and calligraphy classes after parents of his students started complaining about their wards’ poor quality handwriting. He developed his own tools, devised a system and syllabus to provide a strong foundation for his students.

Rao says 16 classes are enough to train seniors with a bit of maturity, but juniors need at least 24 classes to become proficient in beautiful handwriting. If a person is able to write 20 words per minute without compromising with quality, the results are good, he added.

Unlike in a school classroom, individual attention has to be paid to each person to beautify one’s handwriting, so only a limited number of students are admitted for each batch. Before starting the training, a test is given to identify one’s gait in handwriting. It comes from birth. Some people write straight letters, some write them in a slant way. The handwriting gets spoilt if one goes against the natural way of writing, he said.

Usually, handwriting is inspired by teachers and friends. Children try to imitate them, it is the evolving stage. Finally, they get confused and spoil their handwriting. There are also some drawbacks like writing slant towards left, strokes, etc. They are covered up without the knowledge of the students during the training sessions, Rao said.

The loss in beauty of handwriting is a result of drop in concentration and fear of reaching the target of writing about 40 pages in 2.30 hours in examinations. People are also losing touch with writing due to use of computers. The maximum span of a person’s concentration in writing is 20 minutes. So all these aspects have to be taken care of during training sessions, he said.

To popularise the art of writing, Rao has also encouraged his students to conduct classes at various parts of the city. They are training students in their localities and making more people to write beautifully.