Letters without a language

This time of the year every family is on a clean up mission to get ready for the biggest festival of India : Diwali!

And in the utter chaos of ransacking the stores and attics came out something so inexpensive and ignored but at the same time it was something that made me sit back and think about it.

It was a bunch of old letters. Covered in an inch of dust. Tied together in a pile with a string so tight that it had cut through the flimsy paper.

My thumb automatically wiped off a corner as I lifted that pile, only to see it dated back to 1989. I knew who had written it. I knew for whom it was written, not because it was mentioned on the so called “inland Letter” but because it was family..

1989 huh.
A time when people took time out of their busy schedules to  sit down and write what they wanted to someone who was beyond their reach.

A time when every conservative joined-family member had a private moment for themselves when they opened the letter.

A time when housewives waited for hours together at the doorstep to see an old shaggy man clad in a worn out khaki uniform with a bag flung on his shoulder and a black ‘hero’ cycle. Coming to their homes and humbly but loudly, calling out his occupation “Postman!”

A time when couples used to smell the letter for it had the fragrance of the palms of that one special person.
Romance was such an emotional aspect.

People knew they had limited space so they had to write less but mean more. They knew their words were numbered but they also knew how to convey their deepest regards in a few lines.

Well, in times that we now live in, is the one that has made such letter writing a bygone era. Now you have that person on your screen live on a video call.
You can not only talk to them but share much more than just messages and files.

Communication is such a tricky little bugger.
You talk to a person and that exchange of thoughts in real time is communication. But when I read a letter that was 26 years old, I could actually live in that moment. I felt it. I lived it again. I had someone talk to me. For it was not a recording of a person or a podcast. But nonetheless it was that moment of the writer that he had made me live through. We all have that habit of reading a letter in the writers voice. And that adds up to the magic of the whole concept.

When you communicate face to face there is an exchange of thoughts at a rapid rate, moreover there is seldom a chance where you can finish what you originally started. But here …. It was all you! You could go on and on and make the reader a good listener!

Wasn’t that a better way of communicating?

Well you might say I’m wrong. But look back you must have a billion messages on #WhatsApp and #Facebook and #Twitter etc. But how many times have you have even had a valuable conversation? How many times have you scrolled up to see a discussion? Or a really special message by someone who means a lot to you?

But through these evolving times the humble post office survives. Doing efficiently the snail mail service it has been providing from hundreds of years.

So take up a pen and paper and write to someone and believe me they will feel so nostalgic and special, for letters and words are still the best way to take someone’s heart away!
And every time you write a letter you freeze time! Because every time it is read by someone you hold their hand and bring them back to the time when it was written. You bring them back with you no matter where you or they are.

As this cyclone of thoughts went on in my head; I heard my all so familiar ringtone only to look around and see my phone ring… It was an old friend on Skype.
And I snapped back to reality promising myself that I too shall write to someone very soon.

The waterman