When Pen Speaks
By: Dr. Rizwan Rumi
There are moments in life when language betrays us. The lips tremble, the voice cracks and yet nothing meaningful escapes. Sometimes the heart becomes so heavy that words refuse to walk the path from the soul to the tongue. You wish to shout, to cry, to confess but a strange suffocation grips you. In such moments, when every other medium of expression breaks down, there remains one loyal friend—the pen.
The pen does not ask you to be brave. It does not interrupt, nor does it judge. It accepts your trembling fingers, your blurred vision filled with tears and quietly converts your silence into words. If the tongue falters, the pen flows. If the heart bleeds, the pen absorbs. If the world refuses to listen, the pen becomes a witness.
The Pen as a Confidant
For centuries, people have turned to writing when speech became impossible. The pen has served as a confidant, a silent listener that carries secrets more faithfully than any friend. When a person cannot say what weighs upon the heart, they write it down—sometimes in letters never sent, sometimes in diaries never read, sometimes in verses that reach generations.
Mirza Ghalib, one of the greatest voices of Urdu, poured his life’s struggles into his letters. His words were not polished for fame; they were conversations with himself, confessions of a restless soul. Similarly, Anne Frank’s diary became a symbol of hope, written in hiding during the darkest hours of history. She could not stand in a crowd and cry out her fears, but her pen allowed her heart to speak across time and space.
The beauty of a pen is its patience. It never interrupts your grief, never mocks your emotions, never grows tired of your repetition. A diary may be filled with the same lament every night, yet the pen never refuses to write it down again. Where the world tells you, “Move on”, the pen says, “Continue, I am here.”
Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who himself faced imprisonment and censorship, captured this feeling in his poetry:
“متاعِ لوح و قلم چھن گئی تو کیا غم ہے
کہ خونِ دل میں ڈبو لی ہیں انگلیاں میں نے”
The Power of the Written Word
It is often said: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” This is not just a phrase—it is a truth carved into the history of civilizations. Swords may conquer bodies, but pens conquer souls. Armies may occupy land, but words occupy hearts. The ink of a pen has birthed revolutions, shattered empires and built nations.
Think of Allama Iqbal, whose poetry stirred the collective conscience of a sleeping community. His pen planted seeds of awakening, reminding a people of their dignity, their power, their destiny.
Gandhi wrote extensively and his words became weapons of non-violence, shaking the very foundation of colonial rule. Faiz wrote verses that moved masses, verses that frightened oppressors more than any armed rebellion could.
The written word survives where the spoken word perishes. A fiery speech may echo for an hour, but a line of poetry can echo for centuries.
When Society Silences You….
There are times when speaking becomes dangerous. When truth is punished, when dissent is silenced, when society itself demands you hide your pain—what then? In such times, the pen becomes not just a friend, but a rebellion.
History is filled with voices that were suppressed in life but immortalized through writing. Letters from prison, verses written in exile, articles smuggled out of censorship—they all testify that the human urge to express is unstoppable.
For the oppressed, writing becomes resistance. For the unheard, it becomes survival. For the silenced, it becomes freedom.
In Urdu poetry, silence has always been a symbol of both suffering and strength. Ghalib lamented:
“ہزاروں خواہشیں ایسی کہ ہر خواہش پہ دم نکلے
بہت نکلے میرے ارمان لیکن پھر بھی کم نکلے”
These verses show the suffocation of a heart weighed down by countless desires it could not voice. In modern times too, many of us feel this—our lips sealed by fear, custom, or society. Yet when we pick up the pen, silence breaks.
Writing is not only about ink on paper; it is about courage on display. Every line written in defiance of silence is an act of survival and every diary, poem or article written in truth becomes a flame that refuses to die.
The Personal Battle – Writing for Healing…..
Not all battles are fought on streets or in parliaments. Some of the fiercest battles are fought within the human heart. Grief, heartbreak, loneliness—these are wars with invisible wounds. And for such battles, the pen often becomes the only weapon, the only medicine, the only companion.
When one writes in moments of despair, the page absorbs the pain like soft earth absorbs rain. A heart that could collapse under the weight of its own sorrow finds relief in lines and verses. This is why people turn to journaling after loss, to poetry after heartbreak, to prose when depression suffocates.
Writing allows us to pour out emotions without fear of judgment. The page does not laugh at your weakness, nor does it betray your secrets. And in doing so, it gives you a sense of healing.
Ahmad Faraz beautifully expressed the agony of the unsaid:
“سنا ہے سناٹے کو بھی زباں ملتی ہے
جب دل کا دکھ کاغذ پر لکھا جاتا ہے”
It is said even silence finds a tongue, When the pain of the heart is written on paper.
The pen does not heal by erasing pain; it heals by honoring it. It makes the invisible visible, the unspeakable speakable. What was locked within finds a way out, and in that release, we breathe again.
The Universality of the Pen……
The story of the pen is not confined to one language, one culture, or one century. Across civilizations, the pen has been humanity’s bridge between the inner and outer worlds.
Rumi wrote verses that continue to guide seekers of love and wisdom centuries later. Shakespeare’s plays, written over 400 years ago, still shape literature and theater today. Tagore’s words helped craft the soul of a nation. From scriptures to sonnets, from journals to newspapers, the pen connects humanity across time.
Iqbal’s couplets echo in Pakistan, India and beyond. Faiz’s ghazals are sung in gatherings far from where they were written. Words travel; they break borders, dissolve time, and unite hearts that may never meet.
In truth, every writer who picks up a pen joins an ancient caravan—a caravan of souls who refused to remain silent, who believed that ink could outlast stone.
The Pen and Future Generations….
We live, we speak and then we are gone. But what we write remains. The human voice fades with death, but the written word continues to speak long after the hand that wrote it has turned to dust.
This is why books outlive their authors, poems outlive their poets and letters outlive the lovers who wrote them. The pen does not only express…it preserves. It carries our joys, our sorrows, our philosophies, our confessions, into the hands of generations we will never meet.
As Iqbal wrote:
“لکھا ہے اپنے خون سے جو دامنِ چمن پر
رنگیں رہے گا وہ ہمیشہ بہار میں بھی”
Our words are the footprints we leave on the sands of time. The pen ensures those footprints do not wash away.
When All Else Fails, the Pen Speaks….
In the end, when all else fails, the pen speaks. It speaks when the tongue is tied, when society silences, when grief suffocates, when truth is forbidden. It speaks for the lonely, for the broken, for the dreamers, for the rebels. It speaks for us.
Writing is not just an act of expression; it is an act of survival, of defiance, of healing. The pen is not merely ink—it is blood, memory, voice and soul.
Faiz summarized this eternal truth in a couplet that should be etched into every heart:
“بول کہ لب آزاد ہیں تیرے
بول زباں اب تک تیری ہے”
