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| Photo credit: Antonio Littorio (The Power of Words) |
Letter-writing is an old-fashioned and outdated form of communication today. But there was a time when you wrote a letter and waited anxiously for the reply. When the postman's arrival was a cause for joy (or grief). When you lovingly cleaned your fountain pen and filled it with ink. When you chewed on the end of your pen wondering how best to express an emotion in just the right phrase. When many papers were crumpled and thrown away because you couldn't get the right word to describe what you felt. When loveletters were tied up with red ribbons and stored in sandalwood boxes, to be opened and read again and again.
When I was a young girl, I wrote letters. Long, newsy letters to my grandparents, assorted aunts and uncles and cousins and other relatives. And to friends. Pages and pages of news in the most miniscule handwriting that could actually be read without a magnifying lens. (I had to fit it all into one inland letter, or in just-enough pages inside an envelope so I wouldn't have to pay extra postage.) One of my friends, straight out of college, landed rather cushily, or so he thought, into a job as an assistant manager on a tea estate. He hadn't bargained for the loneliness. Years later, when he ran into my father again, he told dad that in those years, it was only my letters that stopped him from quitting his job or committing suicide. Dad grinned. He should know. For years, he had complained that a huge part of his salary went to keeping me in stationery and stamps. (My father actually bought me a letterpad of onion-skin paper so I could use that for even domestic letters.)
When I was a young girl, I wrote letters. Long, newsy letters to my grandparents, assorted aunts and uncles and cousins and other relatives. And to friends. Pages and pages of news in the most miniscule handwriting that could actually be read without a magnifying lens. (I had to fit it all into one inland letter, or in just-enough pages inside an envelope so I wouldn't have to pay extra postage.) One of my friends, straight out of college, landed rather cushily, or so he thought, into a job as an assistant manager on a tea estate. He hadn't bargained for the loneliness. Years later, when he ran into my father again, he told dad that in those years, it was only my letters that stopped him from quitting his job or committing suicide. Dad grinned. He should know. For years, he had complained that a huge part of his salary went to keeping me in stationery and stamps. (My father actually bought me a letterpad of onion-skin paper so I could use that for even domestic letters.)
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