I have long been thinking about writing a letter, and I mean actually writing one and not “typing” as in “e-mailing”. Well, to whom? I haven’t thought about it yet. Thanks to all the technology we have, though its making easier and faster to communicate, haven’t we forgotten the good old way of writing letters? I spent my childhood with my maternal grand parents and my grand father taught me how to write letters to my mom and dad. I very sincerely used to write “Hope this letter finds you in the pink of health, good spirits etc”. Now, when I think about it, I feel where has all the art of letter writing gone? Do people use such phrases anymore? It feels a little vintage to write or to speak like that these days, but yet it’s so beautiful.
I am reading this book called “Indira” by Katherine Frank, which has letters written by Nehru to his daughter. In fact, to tell you the truth waiting to read those letters is what’s keeping me read through the book. Though Nehru used those letters desperately as a way of keeping in touch with his daughter and as a means of discussing everything he wanted to with her, they are not just pieces of information he was passing on to his daughter, but also a lot of love and affection. Reading that book and also memories from good old letter writing days have inspired me to write this post.
It always amazes me how letters can communicate such wonderful feelings. Well, emails also do, but I don’t think they do it well enough! Just a simple example would be – have you ever searched for an email and read it again and again? But you do that with letters, don’t you? At least I do. There are numerous occasions on which I scoured through my letters and searched for that one letter which was so special or which reminded me of some nice things, and read it again and again.
I loved waiting for letters, and I loved spending time writing letters. With emails, it’s like dropping a telegram; we don’t write much in emails, and thanks to the shortcuts, we end up dissecting the language trying to type a quickie! I used to pack my letters with everything I wanted to say, probably because I dint get to write another one till another 10 days (but with emails, you can write another one the next minute!). I am not trying to draw a comparison between letters and emails, but I am just trying to see how much time we used to spend doing something that was so wonderful! I feel the same even with e-cards. There was a time when I used to make personalized greeting cards and give them; which slowly transformed into e-cards; which has now deteriorated into one liner emails! Isn’t that sad? Things which used to give us so much happiness and satisfaction, we no longer have time to spend on them.
I don’t know about everyone else, but all these thoughts have definitely rekindled me enough to go back to writing letters, making cards and all those lovely things. Well, you never know I might end up writing a letter one of these days!
I am reading this book called “Indira” by Katherine Frank, which has letters written by Nehru to his daughter. In fact, to tell you the truth waiting to read those letters is what’s keeping me read through the book. Though Nehru used those letters desperately as a way of keeping in touch with his daughter and as a means of discussing everything he wanted to with her, they are not just pieces of information he was passing on to his daughter, but also a lot of love and affection. Reading that book and also memories from good old letter writing days have inspired me to write this post.
It always amazes me how letters can communicate such wonderful feelings. Well, emails also do, but I don’t think they do it well enough! Just a simple example would be – have you ever searched for an email and read it again and again? But you do that with letters, don’t you? At least I do. There are numerous occasions on which I scoured through my letters and searched for that one letter which was so special or which reminded me of some nice things, and read it again and again.
I loved waiting for letters, and I loved spending time writing letters. With emails, it’s like dropping a telegram; we don’t write much in emails, and thanks to the shortcuts, we end up dissecting the language trying to type a quickie! I used to pack my letters with everything I wanted to say, probably because I dint get to write another one till another 10 days (but with emails, you can write another one the next minute!). I am not trying to draw a comparison between letters and emails, but I am just trying to see how much time we used to spend doing something that was so wonderful! I feel the same even with e-cards. There was a time when I used to make personalized greeting cards and give them; which slowly transformed into e-cards; which has now deteriorated into one liner emails! Isn’t that sad? Things which used to give us so much happiness and satisfaction, we no longer have time to spend on them.
I don’t know about everyone else, but all these thoughts have definitely rekindled me enough to go back to writing letters, making cards and all those lovely things. Well, you never know I might end up writing a letter one of these days!
4 comments:
yeah true, I too miss that those lovely laid back days of letter writing
I am so dying to read a letter written to me ......More than writing letters, I remember the excitement that waiting for the post man used to generate.>And how if I would not receive any letter, I would say " Hamari postal services ka toh Bhagwaan hi maalik hai!!..
But yes , THOSE WERE THE DAYS !!E-mails just pale in comparison .
Shilpi.
Hey...reading thru this certainly reminded me of how high-quality the times used to be when we all wrote to each other...I can't find the signature quality in the emails...way to go Ammu...keep blogging...a writer in the making maybe...!
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