Letters from a forgotten past

Raaja Bhasin

Some of my generation, and almost all those that remain of an older one, have lamented the end of the art of letter writing. I cannot recall the last time I handwrote a letter, put it in an envelope, gummed a stamp, thumped it down and slipped it all into a letterbox. And no, one did not perform that criminal activity, taking that awful shortcut of stapling shut the casing, so that those who had to open it would require extreme caution to prevent their fingers from being pricked. For that matter, the only envelopes one seems to see now, are those that hold money to be passed on at weddings, birthdays and other occasions. Thicker ones, perhaps several, as one is told, go to those beyond the pale of friends and relatives, and are handed over for reasons beyond the scope of this column.

A few may recall how a handwritten letter was prepared. It was like inscribing a gourmet meal on paper. The choice of letter-paper mattered. Fine onion-layered for light-weight airmail; pale blue Oxford, or heavy paper in light cream or stark white for regular letters. For an expensive indulgence, something like Irish vellum could be bought at select stationers. Often enough, the letter-sheet was personalised with the name and address.

For convenience, the readymade inland letter and the airmail could be purchased at the post office — and still can be. On demand, the readymade inland letters came ruled, and in those equally readymade lines, we wrote to family, friends and preceding today’s slick dating sites, made pen-pals with strangers and learnt of other lands. If one was really hard-pressed, then sheets torn from an exercise book would suffice. The writing format on all was similar. The address up on the right, the date just below it — and one never ever used just a numerical format, the month had to be spelt out either in English or if you preferred and were writing in Hindi, then in the Vikrami calendar. One was taught how to end the letter, who was sent this ‘Lovingly’, who received this ‘Faithfully’ and who had to settle for a ‘Yours Truly’.

Practically, all personal letters began by enquiring after the person’s health — no matter how robust he or she was. This would be followed by information about one’s own health, whether the reader was interested or not. Then, living in the hills, one always spoke about the weather. At a time like this, when snow has finally dusted the hills, we would have gone overboard. We would have explained how we managed when the power went off, or when the waterpipes froze. How doors always opened inwards, so that the household did not remain trapped inside and could worm its way out. How one slipped on compacted snow or tied rope over shoes to keep them from slipping. That there was a special technique to tie chains on car tyres for greater traction. It was only years later that my cousins and friends, who lived in the big cities of the plains, asked, “What was all this about the weather? We were not interested.” That was that. The opening lines of years of letter writing were thrown out of the window.

The old inland letter form had half its size left blank on the reverse. As children, we’d make drawings there. To my seven-year-old mind, a drawing of the standard two hills with the sun wedged between them, a plane overhead and additions of a house, a tree and a stream were an exceptional achievement. This was coloured and sent to a favourite aunt. When she showed this to me years later, I had scrawled below that masterpiece, “Please keep this drawing.” While she had, this may have been a cheap way on my part of avoiding buying a picture-postcard, or one may have had secret ambitions that one day this would appear in a frame in a gallery. But this was not a patch on what my sister sent. This was work done systematically and diligently, and as far and as wide as the Indian postal system could carry it — additions, subtractions and multiplication tables, basically a repetition of her homework, were sent off as gentle loving missives. ‘A correspondence course’ to edify and educate the extended family, as our mother put it.

Both our grandfathers wrote to our parents and I still have some of those letters that were once extraordinarily neat, and then, became somewhat illegible as these men aged. In green ink from a fountain pen, our Dadaji exhorted my father or complained about certain things. In what I assume was chaste Urdu (as I can’t read that wonderfully calligraphed script), my Nanaji must have filled the pages with kind words for his son-in-law and much-loved daughter.

There was another set of letters. These were from me sent to my parents while I was at hostel. Apart from the standard refrain, ‘send money’, these also had bits of news of how one was doing. Thanks to those letters, and thanks to my father who decided these should be preserved, I met another me. Someone one was so many decades ago. 

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.