My mom keeps telling me, you might stay in touch on twitter, facebook, email whatever, but the pleasure of exchanging letters and postcards is incomparable. Till last year I used to laugh it off saying she must be kidding, who writes letters dude? And with Indian Postal Services if a person is in hospital a letter will reach you probably after the person is dead. So email is quick, convenient and user-friendly. And no one uses a telegram nowadays (I don’t even think it exists). A simple SMS and you are sorted.
But as I said, till last year. One of my very good friends left Mumbai last year for VNIT Nagpur. The college might be great, but dude, Nagpur?? I don’t know what made him take that college, but he did, eventually. Well to start with hostellers in first year don’t have net access. (Nagpur, see I told you). Secondly when you live in a hostel you don’t have the “daddy paid” landline. You have to call with your own money or probably sneak your roomies cell who sneaked yours to call his girlfriend the previous night.
So when my friend told me he would write to keep in touch, i was baffled.
Me: “Write as in mails right?
Ankur: “No, letters”
Me: Arre seriously say na? Mail or FB inbox.
Ankur: Mail like post. And I’ll probably send a pigeon with it. I‘ll write letters to you stupid. And you are supposed to reply back.
Me: Wtf?? Are you serious? Well, Umm... Ok let’s see
It’s been a year since Ankur left and I still have all 8 letters written by him carefully preserved. I anticipate his letter more than anything else. Every time his letter comes it’s like the arrival of a little packet of joy. It’s like a treasure which I die to open. What happened to the auditions he was talking about? That new NRI girl who had befriended only him in the entire batch? His college festival; how did that go? When is he coming next? In his last letter he had mentioned he had met with an accident. Today his letter saying he was totally fine finally arrived. Phew!
There was an initial awkwardness when I earlier used to reply him back, but eventually I started liking rather enjoying the whole process. I started waiting for his letter. If it took more than 15 days I would get paranoid and call his mom and ask (we will talk strictly on letters, he had told me). The whole process of rushing to the courier guy to see your name on the envelope, receiving it, carefully opening the letter so as to not damage it, seeing his beautiful handwriting, reading his letter, re-reading it, again reading it to decide the reply, carefully selecting which font to use to reply him back (my handwriting is illegible, that’s why). This is a wonderful process in itself which many of us haven’t experienced.
I now agree with my mom. We might tweet and FB inbox. But the overall joy of receiving and sending a letter is unparalleled. Thanks buddy for giving me this wonderful experience. I wish you a speedy recovery! J
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