There’s no dearth of detectives in popular imagination today. While Sherlock deduces logically, CID ’s Pradyumann just concludes. But even their best episodes haven’t come close to what’s unfolding in real life. The setting is the sacking of a prime minister, the backdrop Pakistan: a country that, in its 70 years of independence, has had 27 PMs and not one has completed a full term (one government alone completed a full term but ran through four PMs doing that). The reasons are as dramatic as they are diverse — from coups to downright assassinations. But none of these come even remotely close to what has caused the latest, the judicial sacking of Nawaz Sharif: A pre-loaded free font. Fact is indeed stranger than fiction. And, turns out, it is written in Calibri.

Of the many pre-loaded fonts in our personal computers, the default currently is Calibri. Being Calibri in a family of Arial, Times, Garamond and suchlike is like being a painter in a TamBrahm family of IIT scholars — you never get your due, are always undervalued and underestimated.

But every font has its moment, and looks like Calibri is having that, and then some: Because it has toppled a government in Pakistan. Except for the Pakistani Army, which is possibly miffed that someone else stole its thunder, everyone seems to be happy for Calibri and cheering it on. It’s always nice to see someone get their due, after all.

Designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002-04 and released in 2007, Calibri ousted Times New Roman as the default font in Microsoft Word. The latter was designed for print, so the good folks at Microsoft felt it looked not-so-good onscreen. Deciding that paper was dead anyway, now that most documents are read electronically, they commissioned a font suited for the screen and their proprietary ClearType system. That baby is Calibri.

Sharif’s daughter Maryam flourished a statement describing her ties to a British Virgin Islands company, to distance herself from a case of alleged financial irregularity unearthed by the Panama Papers leak in 2016. Except, that ‘statement’ is in Calibri font. Inconveniently for all concerned, Microsoft had made the font publicly available only in 2007. So, it’s obvious the documents are forged. It’s an open-and-shut case. This is the Pakistan Investigation Agency’s own CID moment. If you saw a detective in a fiction series close a case this high-profile because of a font so low-profile, you’d call it lazy writing. But the truth is that the face of criminal investigations has changed forever. It’s pretty certain that from here on, any sleuth worth her salt will check the font first. Elementary. Well done, Calibri.

At this critical juncture in history, it’s important we answer the burning question of our times: (No, not what happens next in Pakistan) Why did she use this font?

Many reasons come to mind.

She was clearly in a hurry. It is the default font on our computers. She didn’t have the time to change.

Calibri allows you to fit in more content in a certain space than, say, Arial or Helvetica for the same font size. So, maybe Maryam had a lot to say. It wasn’t supposed to be one of those terse, calculated documents.

Calibri appears to be more current and curvy. Maybe Maryam also wanted her contents to look attractive.

Calibri has better kerning (the spacing between letters) than most other sans-serif fonts. Other fonts tend to look out of shape. Maryam is figure-conscious, maybe?

Font psychology research suggests that readers associate Calibri with stability. Maybe she wanted to subtly make a comment about her father’s government.

The 11-point Calibri produces perfect paragraph length, about 700 words on two pages. Maybe Maryam thought this would impress the sticklers at the British Virgin Islands companies.

Calibri has a visible homoglyph: a pair of characters that are easily confused for each other — the lower case of L and the upper case of i (l and I) are fairly indistinguishable. Perhaps, Maryam hoped to gloss over the difference between Lease and ease.

Whatever her compulsions, it is clear the future of Calibri has changed irrevocably. Wikipedia has already closed its page for further edits. Who knows, future personal computers may not even have it. Whichever way this case goes, the writing is on the wall, and it is in Calibri. You don’t need a Sherlock or Pradyumann to tell you that.

Omkar Sane is an author, screenwriter and teacher based in Mumbai

Published on August 4, 2017