Those Snailmail days

When is the last time you put pen to paper and wrote someone a letter? Me for one hardly puts plume to paper and can't even sign my name the way my bank of 20 years remembers it...so much so, all my checks bounce and the only way I make payment is thro cash...ofcourse it helps you withdraw money thro ATMs..My keyboard does the writing for me all the time so my juvenile handwriting is not an embarrassment anymore.
But recently , as my daughter was leafing thro my giant dictionary I bequeathed her, she came across a piece of paper with some writing and a big Snoopy ( Peanuts being her favourite comic series ) at the end of it.." Where do you get this kind of paper, mama?" she asked. It was a letter from my brother written to me during our college years.. I explained to her the concept of letter writing in days long ago and how we spiced up our letters with papers to suit our personalities and moods. (She made a mental note to ask her favourite uncle for any of the Snoopy papers he may have left ) .. As she checked the dictionary for more treasures, she came across a coral coloured handmade letter paper...yet another letter this one was from Chitra , a dear friend from my journalism college days..Reading thro it , I was swept by that wave of nostalgia..How exciting it was those days to check your mail box..Almost every week it brought these treasures, long letters from friends, brother, cousins... how much of our lives we recorded..recently a friend I connected with after a very very long time, said she still has my letters I wrote her once we finished our course together...It was hilarious, she said and recalled what mad antics we were up to those days.
Do they ever sell letter papers these days? I havent checked...In this age of the web, we email each other and FB ..but how much of that special individual bond do we share ? I hate opening my inboxes in the morn everyday becoz they are clogged with sundry forwards...Those rare personal mail I immediately write back...But still it isn't six pages long like the letters we used to write! I don't have an impressive list of friends on FB but in that public space how much can you connect to a person on a for-your-eyes only kind of way..Granted I use the personal message box more often but it isnt the same..
There was a time when one had penfriends..do people have such friends anymore?.I guess in today's cyber age, it's chat friends ! I recall I had a Bengali penfriend , who loved to educate me on lofty ideals, literature, culture and photography, a serious kind of chap ..At some point he accused me of being "too happy" and not serious enough (excuse me, since when did people decide they can slot people into categories they want? ) I promptly cut off the communication thenceforth. Maybe our Bengali babu was dissappointed I wasn't a kindred spirit.
Those were the days angst defined a writer. If you didnt have that wretched feeling you couldnt be a true writer.Believe me , I have had those days but all I could do was put my leg up on the wall and lie in a darkened room and think unhappy blank thoughts...read up Scott F's Crack up essays and Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar at that point but writing never came out of me..All was dark, blank and burning... Look at today's successful writers- Chetan Bhagat ( Aamir gave him some angst all right but that was ages after his books became best sellers) , Shobha De, Amitabh Ghosh ( very talented writer and compelling books but all meticulously researched and planned ...no angst whatsoever )..Salman Rushdie ( does he appear angst ridden? Ask his ex and current girl friends!)
Anyway I'm digressing..we are discussing the dead art of letterwritng here...After all this soul searching, I 'm yet to go out and post a handwritten letter to someone..Brevity defines us..texting, telephones and emails have corrupted us or are we all internalising our lives without giving out much to our loved ones who live far away? Btw, does anyone know how much it costs to post an envelope these days?..just curious!!!