A feature article recently reported that many ‘millennials’ have gone back to old-fashioned letter-writing. A thrill went through me — akin to the thrills I had felt through decades of communicating with friends and family via paper-and-pen letters delivered into the letter box hanging outside our doors.
Hardly anyone indulges in that kind of long-drawn-out snail mail now — not even those stalwarts who had kept the Indian Post and Telegraph Department busy with their insistence on daily letters to parents, spouses and children.
Yes, even we have been ‘turned’. We have gone over to the quick and easy, though we haven’t yet made it the dark side by compulsively posting impulsive comments anywhere and everywhere to make our presence felt. We’re still in the personal sphere. We’re still one-on-one with our friends rather than one-message-for-all on social media.
But one thing is for sure. I cannot go back to the slow pace of yesteryear. The instant two-minute bug has infected me too!
Maybe it is because I had decades of the army post office system (APO) where letters were delivered to my spouse’s work place — to be curiously turned over in his hands for him to read where they came from before I did. When he brought them home at lunch time, I tore them open impatiently, eager to know the fate of the stories and articles I dashed off here and there.
You can imagine how many lunches were ruined: By rejections that saw me utterly despondent at the table, or acceptances that got me so thrilled that I had no idea what I was serving or eating, or news from friends and family that made me so involved in their lives that I was completely unconcerned whether anyone was partaking of the meal I had produced ...
So, I can well understand that those who have not been through our mill of snail mail may like to experience all those feelings — and pour out their hearts on paper, like we used to.
Most of them probably have no problems with expressing themselves, but there are also some who cannot let go of their inhibitions and say what they really feel in permanent ink; or they fear that they are not equipped with the language skills to do so; or they would like to make a 21st century impact, with frills and embellishments to make their letter a thing of beauty forever.
And so, according to the article, some opt for a 21st century solution: Outsourcing!
How does a third party express what is in your heart, I wonder. How do they get to know the little asides and the many inside stories of a relationship? But that doesn’t seem to be a problem because start-up companies are being commissioned to produce handwritten letters at a price. All stops are pulled out, creativity is taken to its heights, and the end result is a piece of prose geared to getting the desired effect.
Obviously, the simple inland letter or aerogramme that we used would not suffice — though we certainly tried to get our money’s worth out of every square millimetre of it. Our handwriting contracted as our thoughts overflowed and no space was left blank, with inner flaps and outer ones not spared either.
It didn’t need stealth and steam for the curious to read what was happening in our lives. Anyone with patience — and skill at deciphering the micrographia we adopted — could do it; but I’m almost sure no one did. It was just too much trouble.
And now, years later, I wonder whether the recipients of my letters took the trouble either. Did they lift those pages this way and that, crane their necks, strain their eyes ...?
Or did they just skip the difficult-to-decipher parts?
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
