Blank Pages

I always feel refreshed at the sight of a blank page. It doesn’t smell. It has no lines. It’s just blank, and it’s waiting patiently for someone to do something and fill it up with words.  It can’t read the words either. They are all ones and zeros to it. But, nevertheless, there it is. A blank page that is waiting.

Waiting for what? Is this the blank page that will see a new work of art unfold? Is it the blank page that will see a short story written? 

Will this blank page be the start of a legal document? Can some words scribbled on a blank page be enough to spark an international incident?

I wonder.

Or, will the page remain forever blank, forever waiting for someone to come and etch some meaningful words into it?

I wonder how many such pages are written on, torn out, re-written on and left to gather dust in corners of drawers or the linings of dustbins. I wonder how many blank pages shed their blankness and become that love letter she wrote to you. I wonder how blank pages came together and told a writer to write on them, so you now have a book in front of you.

And I wonder, is the pen mightier than the sword, because like the sword has its hilt, the pen has its blank page?

The Bilge Master