The laziness that follows a heavy meal, the wait for friends to turn up for the evening game sessions and the scorching heat comprised my afternoons in the 90s. I kept myself busy by shooing away hens that would take shade in our verandah and dirty the place in the process and watching our pet cats stretch in the sun. In between, I may dig my teeth into a mango from the collection we gathered during our morning expeditions. The much welcome break came as the ring of a bicycle bell - the ubiquitous postman’s bicycle.
I would rush out, allowing the sizzling gravel on our front yard to burn my feet. I would be thrilled if he had more than one envelope to hand over to me. I would sit on the parapet of the verandah, oblivious of hens and the dirt now, and relish the letters one by one. A cunning craw may swoop down and snatch away the mango I kept half eaten.
I would read them again and again, may be in the evening, next day morning, before framing a reply. The reply would be written over days, specifying the time and date on each sections, which would have the narration of the entire events of the day. I would have narrated the same event in different letters but writing each afresh. No copy pasting could be done on the blue inland letter or papers torn from notebooks.
I would treat my replies the same way as the ones I received, reading them again and again. I would add the missed out points in the margin with stars and symbols in the text indicating the context. The yellow post cover for Rs 4 would hold three foolscap papers. I would ensure that I posted no envelope without filling it to the maximum capacity!
This continued even after I completed my PG, when I was introduced to emails by a friend. Initially I shied away. Later when I started using it, I felt it was much viable financially too. I could use email for half an hour at a cyber café spending Rs 15. To make the best use of Rs 15, I would sit at home, write the mails in the personal computer my brother had bought then, and save them all to a floppy disk. All I needed to do at the cyber café was to send out the mails. During each visit to the cafe in the university library, I ensured I sent out at least 10 mails in half an hour, cutting down drastically on my envelope costs!
The suspense that a handwritten letter brought home was slowly going elusive and I was missing the words in ink. In 2004, I reached Chennai on my first job. In our office, all desktops didn’t have internet connection. I would spend hours at cyber café on my off day. There would be 14-15 mails from my friends waiting in my inbox. I would open them with the same glee as I would receive a letter from the postman.
The happiness deteriorated further when I started my second job in Bangalore in 2007. In my new office, all the PCs were provided with internet connection. Still there was some element left as we were not allowed to check personal mails during work hours. Later when gmail became so popular and unavoidable for work related matter also, mails started losing its charm with its frequency going up.
And it all ended with a ping in May this year, when I decided to join the smartphone brigade. Every now and then mail alerts would pop up, singing a swan song to the beauty of that short wait for a mail.
Now as messages float around in whatsapp 24x7, there’s no more waiting. Handwritten words are no more adding joy to our lives nor is the wait for a mail.
