What you call the letters these days?

Three years ago

I was loitering in the store room of my house which was isolated in the first storey. When I was peeking through the cardboard boxes for novels, a book fell down. It was so torn, so feeble; the papers were so brown that it appeared like it had been dyed with brown paint. I carefully took that book in my hand and opened it. It looked as a record book of my mom, which she had used during her undergraduate days. When I turned through the pages of that record book, a paper fell out from that, It was light blue in colour. It gave the same impression as the record note. The paper was fully occupied with the pen writing which made the condition of the paper even worse. It was neatly folded that the folded edges added strength to the delicate nature of that paper. On one side of the paper there were two addresses. It also contained the small delineation of Subash Chandra Bose on it and on closer examination I found that it was the stamp and that paper was the Legendary INLAND LETTER. That was addressed to my mom by her best friend. I really got freakish gooseflesh when I realized that I had been holding something which will soon share the place in the museum with the fossils. Yesh! This post is dedicated for letters!

Thirteenth March, 2015

When we people of this generation proudly boast that we are the last generation people who played hide and seek, last generation to see the proper Cartoon network, last generation to have used twenty five paise, last generation to have used bicycles, last generation to have used slate and chalk in Kinder garden and many more last generation facts, we have clearly missed one of the most blissful gifts which previous generation people had used, The letter communication. As I am writing this particular post, I playfully asked my roomie what strikes his mind if I say ‘Inland letter’, His eyes went so puzzled and gave a reply like “What the hell is that?”. Now I unambiguously feel that I have committed on a needy topic.

Evolution had been so instant. Before my twentieth birthday I have seen letters reaching my house, rotary dial telephones (The dial in this particular one excited me more than lollipops did during my childhood, please do google it if you cannot recognize this phone). Cordless phones which are the ancestors of modern day Mobile phones gave us the freedom to roll on the bed, hanging on the stair case support wall, cuddle with the pillows on the couch, while talking over phone. This was not possible in the conventional telephones. Then came the bricks, I mean mobile phones, rapidly and steadily the size of the phones and features of the phones got inversely proportional, where size of the phone always got smaller. At present it appears like mobile phones will gulp down the purpose of personal computers and who knows what may happen in future?!

I have always wanted to get a letter addressed for me whenever I come across letter-message allied scenes in movies, especially Harry potter! I used to get super excited when Harry gets letter from Hogwats, I day dream like getting such letters from such sort of school. What I actually get is consolidated unit test mark list which gets posted from my school to my name every month! Where I take great care to smuggle that and bury it in the lofts before it gets taken care by dad.

We have grown up tasting the excitement from our first “Welcome” message from our first ever Yahoo account, Chatting with friends in GTalk, posting rubbish scraps in our friend’s scrapbook (FYI many of my friends hadn’t even enjoyed the fun of orkut silliness ) Facebook statuses and tweets! Ignorance is nothing but not realizing the fact that letters bring excitement which is greater than the excitement provided by sum of all the above petty petty events I mentioned earlier.

Along with the letters then is one another habit which is in the verge of losing its habitat. It can be told that letters without that is like Balaji without hyperactive behavior. If you haven’t guessed it still, Sorry dude! You hadn’t lived in your childhood at all! Stamp collection. Letters and stamps are like andril paravai, if one dies so do the other. I find it very funny now when i read in papers that government is releasing stamps of great minded or great activists in order to honor them. When there is no one to eat your bread, for whom do you make French toast?  

When there is sharp increase in number of love proposals that happens through whatsapp there can’t be a better evidence to say that letter writing habit is in death bed. Letters served as a classic show piece to deliver love and deny love, but now even the middle school kids google any romance quote and send them believing that it is the evident way of telecasting their love. When the art of proposing via letters are dead then the courage to give the letter seeing the eyes, controlling the perspiration is also dead!

You might feel lazy to write two paper full to deliver a message but remember it is bliss to read two papers full of text written for us by our friends to convey the message. So we must write to be written to.

Start writing, forget the technologies, take a pen, paper, sit in a calm surrounding, write, and write for all the persons whom you consider important. Write for the friends you have stopped talking with, write for the friends you have just started speaking a week ago, there can’t be a greater height of happiness when the recipient writes for you stating that the person was surprised and felt that digital-detox-happiness.  No wonder that I have started on this topic after one of my ‘valiant’ friend discussed with me about the importance of letters. She has initiated the letter writing movement and has passed the baton to me.

One thing we should realize

Whatsapp, emails might be fast and instant way to communicate but it also silently testimony that we are getting old instantaneouly. Letters makes our memory always-sixteen and takes us slow to our sixty!