Satire: Guess what's mightier than a Pen?

I am sure we have heard the age old proverb - "Pen is mightier than Sword". Which is to mean a non-violent approach to solving a problem is more beneficial than a violent one. It's a very useful and relevant proverb since time immemorial. Until recently in India, that is.

We Indians have adopted a "novel" and "cost-conscious" approach to take law into our own hands (quite literally). Once upon a time, there used to be something known as Ink. Some intellectuals used long leaflets, dipped the tip of the leaflet into ink-pots and write intellectual stuff that found its way into our School syllabus and we cleared those subjects by mugging the words rather than the thoughts. Since nature missed a trick to store ink in leaflets, humans made ink-pens, which is nothing more than a leaflet type object with ability to store ink. Then someone disrupted this industry - ball-point pens. This was followed by computers where the ink is stored only in the cartridge of the printers! We don't need to use ink to write - just type some stuff and take a print-out!

All this is considered legal and market driven. What's not considered market driven is the below -

Who's responsible for this? These incidents can only be termed as frustration pouring out through ink. Not the frustration of the people who threw ink, but for the people who manufacture ink for a living. Consider this - ink manufacturers are after all - aam aadmi. They need to survive. The technology age has forced their product to enter "decline" stage in the product life cycle. They need to extract the maximum possible juice from their product before being extinct. Now-a-days, many people are maintaining online diaries. Newspaper firms have e-paper as an alternate product just to be in business when newspapers become extinct. So how in this beautiful world can ink manufacturers survive? Where will their next million come from?

Strategy and how it works - Politicians are not missing an opportunity to lower opponents from the proverbial ladder of success. One of the way is to embarrass their opponents at every option given to them. Throwing shoes is one way (they smartly throw one shoe so that the victim doesn't have an option to wear them). Another way is to throw something that can darken the face temporarily and that's where ink comes into picture. News hungry cameras will catch the action live and it will be shown in ultra-slow motion (same technology used in Cricket) with hours of needless analysis thrown in. Ink manufacturers meanwhile get all this promotion for FREE! That's right, everything happens free of cost and the actions encourage potential buyers. A new market in the making. Marketing is, after all, finding a hole in the marker provided there's a market in the hole. Isn't that just brilliant?

There was an era when swords were considered powerful. Then the writers made pen mightier. Who would have ever thought that ink would be the mightiest of them all and that too, in this digital era!