Page 48 - Seniors Today - Vol1 Issue 3

Once Upon A Time | Letters
Emotions in an envelope
Writing, reading and the special joy of receiving letters in bygone days.
By Vandana Kanoria
For a long time they lay forgotten and unread
in rusted trunks, in attics of my childhood
home in Kolkata - tied up in string, slipping
and sliding out of files, they stayed quiet and
uncomplaining, until one day, gripped by a
wave of nostalgia, I took them out and began a
journey back to my childhood. Yes, they were
letters – in envelopes with decorative stamps,
airmail letters in their wispy envelopes, with
airplanes flying in the corner and “Par Avion”
under the wings, and on the inside, news
written on onion-skin paper. Others came
from less exotic destinations. These came from
cousins and friends - inland letters written on
lined sheets torn from notebooks, with little
doodles and drawings to better illustrate the
feelings contained in words. In those days,
emotions triumphed over emojis!
I loved writing letters to my friends, cousins,
pen-pals. I waited eagerly for their letters,
wondering what surprises they would hold
within their pages. I looked for details in the lilt
of a heart instead of an ‘o’ in love, the flourish of
the ‘v’ in my name. I could see who was wired
on the high of first love, or weighed down by
despair and pain and therefore how the words
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staggered and stumbled, how the lines crawled
up and down the page. When I wrote letters,
I would be under the spell of phrases - the
magic and mystery of words. These letters are
the marks left behind, the tracks of an earlier
journey through times long lost.
Sometimes the envelopes were heavy;
containing postcards of distant lands,
photographs of never-seen friends, or little
keepsakes from cousins. Sometimes the letters
would be redolent with the fragrance of pressed
flowers, tucked in pages, grown in a little garden
in some corner of the world…
And the heaviest were those that carried
the weight of secrets never to be told! Today
when I read them a wave of nostalgia engulfs
me - nostalgia for the laughter and innocence
of childhood, for the girl I was then, with her
whole life ahead of her.
Letters are physical objects, with all the
tactility and uniqueness. Writing one is an
activity of leisure, a contemplative practice.
On its pages we argue, say goodbye, dream,
forgive and tell our secrets. We slow down, sit
with pen and paper and thoughts of the person
we are writing to. There’s a lot of one’s self in a