CHANGING WITH THE TIMES

There’s a day allocated every year to mark almost every other cause ranging from International Labours Day, World Environment Day to Energy Conservation day. With the date varying every year in my case though depending on my convenience, mood and time to spare, I’ve a day allotted to my ‘Room Sorting’ day to clear out all the unwanted stuff, papers, bills, mailers, invites, intimations and other sundry items that get accumulated over the year.  Most transactions like credit card / bank statements, investment updates and mobile bills have been converted into e-formats and gone paperless. But few others still resort to traditional ways of sending exhibition / event invites, donation acknowledgement through our humble post cards and End-of-season sale mailers from retailers. While I was sifting through the bunch, I also stumbled upon a stack of letters written to me a few years back by my close circle. While computer labs were accessible in the college, it was more comfortable to write letters from your own room space with the laptop privilege not yet available then at a student level. That close-knit group included my cousin whom I grew up with like she was my twin sister and were forced to be apart later due to our college admissions in different cities, my roommate, a senior college mate and another hostel mate with whom I exchanged letters during vacations, my aunt who at that time was living in Botswana sharing her life in adventurous Africa and keeping track of my academic performance and kept telling me I was IAS material and of course those occasional info update letters from my parents in Chennai who had a list of concerns and instructions that couldn’t be elaborated over phone to their daughter studying in far-away Delhi. All of them had written to me regularly and I seem to have put them aside every cleaning year without having the heart to throw them away. They’ve now invariably become my memories of growing up years. As I sat down reading a few of them, it was hard not to turn nostalgic about those non-internet days when communication was so much more personal and thought-stirring.

Having studied in a co-education atmosphere in the best college for Commerce in Asia, there were lots of opportunities to mingle with really smart and intelligent guys during my days of studying. One particular incident that I can never forget was during my Inter-collegiate cultural festival hosted by my college every year that would look more like a students’ mela with all those fun things like juke box, stall games and giant wheel installed in the college campus while the competitions would be held inside the auditorium. While I was on a ride sitting atop the giant wheel along with another senior whom I was hanging out with quite a bit, he suddenly asked me how good my handwriting was. I quizzically replied ‘Quite good’. He looked into my eyes and said ‘Then write to me’. It was such an endearing way of breaking through a girl who would otherwise hesitate to give her phone number. That was the ice-breaker to bond with someone I’d just been with for a few days and we stayed in touch by simply writing letters graduating later to phone calls, emails and he eventually went on to become a major influence in my life.

Cinema too had its share of the lead actors exchanging their thoughts through those priceless letters. What an amazing run ‘Kaadhal Kottai’ had at the box office for its novel idea of two people falling in love without seeing each other but by just expressing themselves through words in those simple inland letters. As recent as the film ‘P.S I Love you’  released in 2007 saw a touching tale of a husband (as played by Gerard Butler) who posthumously helps his wife, played by Hillary Swank, to get over his unfair fate through letters written before his demise and carefully planned to be delivered at every fitting occasion secretly through her mother. I doubt if emails would’ve succeeded in making a grieving widow go through this journey of re-discovery and seamlessly aid her to overcome the fear of falling in love all over again. With the evolution of smses, skype, 3G and g-talk, today it’s so matter-of-fact and to the point with far less intimacy involved. With most of us equipped with a mobile phone or internet we cannot even relate to writing “Nalam. Nalam ariya aaval” by snail mail and wait for a week to ten days to get someone’s reply. But letter writing had its share of good old days holding a good lot of memories documented and imprinted in our lives at some point.

As the medium of communication evolved, so did the style of romance change in movies too? ‘You’ve got mail’ was one of the earlier films that made use of the new technology to open up with complete strangers through online chatting,  leading the actors Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks to fall in love despite being rivals in the book store business. Fast forward to 2012 and the no-patience generation would prefer to communicate through the more instant sms-es where the heroine anticipates her lover to call or sms her while she sings ‘Azhaipaaya’ in the film ‘Kaathalil Sothappuvadu Eppadi’.

My mom asked me to quickly write a hand-written letter to the EB department recently to complain about some extra watt power that gets transmitted by default was damaging the domestic appliances. And I realised how difficult it was to write on paper with a simple pen without making mistakes. Not to miss my handwriting that looked so horrible as compared to the studying days and ironically being awarded with those tiny certificates in school as perks for best hand-writing. With the touch screen formats in cell phones and ipads picking up, tomorrow we might even find typing on our keyboards and laptops tedious and painful.

Today as I attempt at finishing this column, it seems a cakewalk to just write, re-write, press backspace & delete keys and edit it without wasting any paper. So yes, it has its technological advantage and a great eco-friendly way of saving paper. But penning your thoughts in your own handwriting, posting it to your loved ones and the sheer excitement to wait for the reply and read the letters in your own private space shutting the door behind you, had its own charm. Nehru-ji made a New Year resolve in 1931 to continue writing letters from Naini prison to his ten year old little girl, Indira as he did in the summer of 1928 from the Allahabad prison. But he came out of jail soon and his mind was too full of the making of India’s history as it was being made every day. His political role and a whirlpool of other public affairs made it so hectic for him that he wished for the peace and solitude of the prison cell to continue writing.  Since we’re not that busy running a country and making decisions that affect economic policies, it might not be a bad idea to try writing a hand-written letter to someone you love and surprise them. As Nehru-ji opines, they might just find in reading them a fraction of the pleasure that you had in writing it.