When I was young, everyone wrote letters to each other. I have many handwritten letters from people and even though some of them may be torn or faded, the memories they evoke are rich and resonant. The most treasured letters are naturally from my parents who have passed away, my brothers, my kids when they were growing up, and those wonderful women who chose to love me, starting with the pretty girls in school. Phones were not so common then. So we wrote to each other on postcards, inland letters, and on sheets of paper posted in envelopes with lovely stamps stuck on them. Not all the emails, tweets, smses that come my way these days can quite evoke the magic of those handwritten letters.
None of us quite anticipated the letter’s sudden demise. So, not many of us preserved the letters we received. Luckily I did though I wish I had kept some more of them. Today, when almost all communication is only verbal or virtual, one misses the intimacy of handwritten words. Once in a while I chance upon them while searching for some old papers I am amazed at the patience, the gentleness, the unspoken bonding of a time when people sat down and wrote their hearts out to their friends, family and lovers, in their own hand. Some like Amitabh Bachchan still do, in his characteristic calligraphic write. But less, I guess. I now get smses from him as he is busy conversing with the whole world at large through his blog.
Letters, unlike blogs, were not meant for people. They were always one on one. I have personal letters from Indira Gandhi telling me how disappointed she was when I gave up poetry and became a journalist. I have letters from Nirad C Chaudhuri telling me why he quit Delhi and moved to Oxford to enjoy a civilised academic environment. I have letters from Ruskin Bond, describing the weather up in the hills, hand scribbled poems from Kamala Das, Mulk Raj Anand’s charming epistles, P Lal’s exquisitely calligraphed notes encouraging me to become a writer. In fact, his Writers Workshop in Kolkata published all my early books of poems in exquisite handcrafted editions. The titles were handwritten by Lal himself.
Later, my friends grew. I have letters with drawings by Souza, trying to analyze my signature, my life, my loves. I have countless doodles from Husain, each one a charming missive. I have long hand written texts from Ram Kumar, Manjit Bawa, Prabhakar Barwe, doodles from Gaitonde’s lonely barsaati in Delhi. Manu Parekh used to send me a sheaf of drawings on my birthday every year. Manjit did the same. Kishore Kumar sent me his songs in handwritten notations. But the letters closest to my heart are my mother’s inland letters recalling on my every birthday different anecdotes about my birth, my growing up years, the mosquito net under which I slept and how she tucked me away at night.
I no longer sleep under mosquito nets. There’s no one to tuck me away at night. My mother’s memories are fading these days, not because I love her any less but time has healed the pain of her absence. I speak to her in my thoughts. There are no letters, no words I have to decipher meanings from. In fact, all communication today is more obvious (and more guarded) and even though I respond to hundreds of sms, emails, tweets I get from friends, acquaintances, colleagues and the occasional lover, I can sense I am missing something out there. I preserve the letters my kids sent me when they were in school and the art of letter writing was still alive. But now all I get on my birthday are scribbles, flowers, chocolates, books, CDs, aftershaves. Among my cherished gifts are still pens even though I write so rarely with them. But I still preserve the Mont Blanc Rajiv Gandhi gave me, Amitabh’s golden Bulgari, Sanjay Gandhi’s Cross pen that Maneka gifted me on one of my birthdays and a calligraphic pen P Lal gave me when my first book of poems appeared. I also have the Bengali translations of my poems that Shakti Chattopadhay, one of the greatest poets of our time, scribbled on torn sheets of paper and brought me on a wintry morning, drunk out of his wits, as my birthday gift. I preserve that manuscript more dearly than the book that later appeared.
The technology of communication has vastly improved. Smses cost a paisa now. Email is free. So are tweets, DMs, FaceBook postings. But I miss the personal touch of the handwritten letter, the poem, the manuscript, the drawings, the music notations my friends would send me. No flowers, no chocolates, no CDs can quite compensate for them.
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