Letters ! - post no. 8 - Blog marathon
Do you remember the good old times when we used to write letters? I do... I loved writing letters and was really excited when I would receive a reply. In fact the mere sight of a post man would send me to the height of excitement and happiness.
I started writing letters when I was really young, may be 5 or 6 because my early childhood was spent away from my parents so my Aunts would make me write to my mother off and on. I would struggle but would write to my mother whenever I got a chance.
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| picture courtesy : internet |
The sky blue 'inland letters' had the charm of a person itself. When I left my grandparents place and joined my parents in Delhi the tradition continued, now my mother made me write to my grandparents and Aunts.. it was so gratifying I still remember how I used to wait for the post man to bring the replies to my letters.
Such was my fixation with letters, post man and post box that whenever my parents bought me some savories on an outing I would make sure to put a part of it into the red bright post box so that my grandpa would be able to eat it... childhood and it's pure innocence !!
Then came the teenage years, those days 'Children's world' magazine used to carry a 'Penfriends column' with particulars of people, mostly children, with information about their age, hobbies and address so if you felt someone was like minded you could write to them and become their 'pen friend', of course with their consent.
I had many pen friends and they were all so nice. I had a 'pen friend' with whom I used to exchange very long letters, we used to write about various topics and even debate in our letters. The amazing thing is I still have my friendship intact with this friend of mine, it has grown from pen friendship to life long friendship.. and the coincidence is that both of us are in the same profession.
Now a days we are living in an age of communication overdose, we have so many mediums but the charm of a good old hand written letter is lost somewhere. I do not remember when was the last time I wrote a hand written letter.
How I wish we could all go back in time and still read and write and enjoy the charm of writing long handwritten letters to our loved ones in that sky blue 'inland letter'!!
I loved writing letters too Rekha. It had an intimacy that can not be matched by any of the new age communication methodologies in place right now.
ReplyDeleteI used to write letters to friends, relatives and i learnt malayalam by writing letters in malayalam to some of my cousins who were in Bahrain in an attempt to learn the language. They used to correct my language by actually cutting and pasting ( the actual one) in the letter they wrote from there and it used to be so much fun. Thanks to them, I learnt to write malayalam fluently.
then the computers entered my world and i remember typing my letters and printing the letters on an inland and sending them.
but nothing to beat the handwrittten inland letters.
They are so nostalgic and reminds me of a time when my grandparents sent letters to my parents and they read it aloud for us.
vow.. at least we have such memories to hold on to think of our children who probably have not even seen an inland till date !!
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