India, July 5 -- A cheque I wrote bounced recently, not because there wasn't enough money in the account but because the teller at the bank said my signature didn't match the one they had on file.

I looked at her records, then at the piece of paper I had just signed. She was right. The new one was lazy, hurried, a smudge of habit. The older one, from years ago, was careful, precise, deliberate. I could even remember practising it.

Back then, it felt like a declaration: This is how I will mark the world. Now, my hand doesn't remember or care. That disturbed me more than I expected.

I grew up in a time when learning to write was not just a rite of passage but an actual ritual. I have a faint memory of my first lesson, at our home in Mumb...