Excerpts from my column ‘Talespin’ being readied for publication in March 2017 issue of The Wagon Magazine
(From Talespin – Mailophile – Era.Murukan)
Receiving letters is more a fulfilling experience than reading them. The very act someone somewhere has sat down with a singular purpose to contact someone else through correspondence is gratifying immensely as the craving to be noticed is addressed by such an act. As a schoolchild, it was my permanent lament, ‘No one writes to me’. This being the common complaint of all the students at Class 8 A, we ensured we received our letters regularly and in plenty.
Those were the days in which, the embassies of most countries were working overtime to enlighten the people of the nations where they function, on their culture, history and regular diplomatic happenings. We boys obtained most embassy addresses through a wide variety of contacts and wrote each embassy a post card. With 20 odd boys writing individually to each of the 50 odd embassies in New Delhi, the financial outlay at the rate of 15 paise per card was quite formidable as cash inflow was always sporadic and was in a trickle.
This problem was more or less resolved brilliantly with aggregation becoming the pure play strategy to be employed. Each of us wrote to the same embassy on pieces of paper torn from our notebooks (never a mathematics notebook with its odd size). The format of the letter would be the same. Commencing with promises of eternal friendship and best wishes to their nation, sharing our delight at the fast growth of that country in all respects, mentioning about our keen desire to know more about the country and people and then, in the last part, placing a request to send us books and periodicals about the country so that we would be kept consistently enlightened and finally wishing them more growth and prosperity. The postal address of the letter writer would be furnished in all these letters prominently.
All the correspondence would be placed in a large sized thick envelope and sent to Ghana embassy or American Consulate or any particular country we fancied at that time. The expenses for forwarding would be shared among the participants, which would be only a fraction of individual correspondence cost.
The thrill in receiving huge parcels from most of these embassies and consulates in response to our letters is something that begs adequate description and could not be comprehended; unless you too have experienced it. Most of us received those brown paper parcels from the postman at totally unexpected moments. The postman for our area was more dutiful than the honourable minister of posts and telegraph in the central government. He would strive to deliver even if the address was inadequate, based on logical presumptions and with a thorough knowledge of the micro history of the streets under his command and the inhabitants.
Thus, he knocked at the backyard door one afternoon and delivered me a thick brown paper envelope from the Hungarian embassy.
The ambassadorial gift consisted of books printed in the best quality paper with a soft smooth silky texture and the fragrance of the printing ink hinting at the greatness of country it was printed. There were lot of photographs in each book showing the people happy wherever they were and whatever they were doing. In all those books, old women would recline in armchairs sipping fruit juice while elderly men would sit relaxed along riverbeds with their fishing gear in full display. The fish sometimes would be seen diving out apparently eager to get in sync with the hook, line and sinker. Everyone including the fish would be smiling.
The African countries preferred sending regular newsletters than forwarding books, which was mostly the practice of the European nations, and were strict one off deliveries. Chinese and Japanese embassies never replied to us, as they would have expected mail in their native languages. The USA was another chronic defaulter, perhaps thinking it was well beneath their dignity to engage in correspondence with schoolchildren.
Ghana Newsletter, Uganda Review, Benghazi Journal and numerous other African newsletters were regularly sent to us mostly every month. Without fail, all these newsletters would sport in the first page the photograph of the president or prime minister of the country smiling and addressing a crowd partially shown in the photograph. The same gentleman would be seen playing a huge drum in the fourth page and holding the hand of a child in the sixth, which would the last page. Sometimes the photographs would be replaced with those of someone else playing the drum, addressing, or kissing the infants. We understood that a change of guard had taken place with the previous drumbeater already been shot dead or escaped to another nation seeking refuge. Of course it all made little difference to us.
Some of us were more ambitious and requested information to be sent not only to them but to their close relatives as well. Thus, Jewel of Africa Newsletter was sent by a tiny African country, every month without fail, to a friend’s grandmother, for ten long years. She used to sit in the front yard of the house, with a persistent cough. The tiny African nation thought it was their top priority duty to keep the old Indian lady, hard of hearing and partially blind notwithstanding, updated with the latest happenings in their tiny nation. The senior citizen, perhaps energized by the Jewel of Africa Newsletter correspondence had a hale and healthy existence until she was 92. She breathed her last a month after the embassy pulled the plug on despatching the Jewel mail to her.
That is about the delight and thrill in receiving letters, mostly unexpected, when the information technology revolution was yet to happen. We seldom write or receive those conventional mails nowadays. Instead, we are into emailing and internet based chatting for information sharing. The frontiers of correspondence have extended to include video and audio touch basing with almost everyone armed with a smart phone. It is zero delay correspondence as things stand.
(The article in full awaits publication in March 2017)