An obsolete art it is. Thankfully not extinct. Its importance diminished by telephone, email, IM and (cmon!!) tweets and status messages. I agree that, all of the above are convenient, fast, real time and primarily guarantee delivery(except may be, Webmail), however lack, may we say, the exoticism of a letter. I haven't written a letter, or rather written anything at all in ages. Only typed and printed. But yeah, I did use to. In fact to a not very distant past. And should I say, I am grateful to my grandfather for being a technology illiterate (I didn't mean he cannot use a phone).
Back in those days, while a yellow postcard served the purpose of delivering a succinct 'I am still alive' message at the price of peanut (the omission of plurality is deliberate), a blue inland could still transmit the entire neighbourhood gossip at half the cost of a minute's local call. Either ways it was fun. While the lead writer (mostly mom) would claim 2 of the tiny three and half page for being one, the rest of the family could cram their Hi's into the remaining space, pushing the limits by scribbling into the flaps meant for gluing. What would start as legible neat letter would end up looking like a cheat sheet, with probably the essential information (recalled at the last moment) dismembered by the eager recipients.
Checking mail boxes was a thing of suspense (unlike today when you would be right 2 out 3 times if you guessed the sender was Capital One or Pathmark), because the arrival of letter usually meant surprise, mostly pleasant. Frequently informing a relative's upcoming visit or someone's birth, I have even witnessed recipes and horrorscopes (I hope I spelled it right) that eventually materialized into marriages. And for those who used to preserve letters, the sheer joy of revisiting those past days by reopening the chest and shouting out "Did X really write that?", "Was that what my handwriting looked like?" far surpasses the magnitude of annoyance of your boss's immediate reply on your report saying, "Redo this crap !", and the pain of doing English homeworks from Wren & Martin.
I bet even to this day, you would more than just please a friend or a relative by sending a postcard from wherever you are at the moment (instead of updating your Twitter) when you are traveling. Well, at least I believe, not from experience though, as far as love stories go, if a 100 proposal attempts has so far resulted in the display of the middle finger, a nicely written love letter might just seal the deal :)
6 comments:
One of your finest posts till date! Dil se! I remember writing 'thank you' letters to my sisters who mailed me rakhis and how I used to carve the notebook paper on the edges to create a pattern...
Keep up the good work!
Nice one Srini! I still preserve all the letters my bro wrote to me when I was in high school.
Nice :) The first day at Trichy, I went with Mom and Dad and bought a couple of postcards, some stamps and a few inland letters at our "Shopping Centre" :D
I still have them ( the last letter I wrote was in Class X I think ) ! stamps obviously outdated, the blue inland turning to yellow :)
But yes, letters are priceless. To a lesser degree,but moving with the times, a well written e-mail that adheres to our quaint old style taught by Michael Sir (like mine do), is valuable too :) Good old Michael Sir !
Thanks a lot ppl..
@Shriram: I guess a lot of credit for this post to exist goes to Michael Sir :)
The last letter I wrote was a part of my School Curriculum - Marathi subject. To send a letter to your parents from a nearby school! :)
Excellent post! And so true. So many times, I have had similar discussions with friends, remembering the times we wrote letters...the warmth of receiving a letter far surpasses any status update or whatever! And I'm so happy that recently I received cards with a letter crammed into its every available space from a couple of my friends. And when I sent a birthday card to my sister, her first reaction was "It was such a wonderful feeling to receive a card in the mail!" :)
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