Facing a class of students, all in their early 20s, I was casually explaining a postcard in the context of a poem. Looking at their blank faces, I realised they didn’t know what a postcard looked like and the closest we came to size and shape was the ubiquitous mobile phone in front of every student.
Ending a discussion of the poem for the time being, we went to talk about letters, red post boxes, and the postman.
That is when one student hesitantly told me she had been writing to a friend online for a while and, gradually, others joined in about writing long emails to friends they had met while in school or while on vacation.
Letter writing is a long-treasured art. The oldest recorded handwritten letter is said to be from around 500 BCE, written by the Persian Queen Atossa. Until this millennium, letters were a common means of communication.
Recent surveys in the United States show that 64 per cent of respondents have never written a letter but 69 per cent would love to get a handwritten note, according to newsmagazine India Today.
Letters have been called ‘windows to the soul’ and a way to understand the human condition. Often, they were meant to be public statements, like the philosopher Seneca’s ‘moral letters’ which instruct lessons on how to live a good life. Poet John Keats wrote elaborate letters on his idea of poetry: ‘What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth’ became the anthem for early Romantic poetry.
Letter writing may soon become a dying art, but there are many reasons why it should, and can be revived. Letters reveal life in all its domesticity – not the big historical moments found in textbooks but the everyday realities of life. It is the way in which the ordinary becomes valued.
We do still write, but it’s in the form of emails – more formatted, less spontaneous.
As Suzy Hazelwood says “they are infinitely revisable, deletable – as well as easily forwardable”. They are probably less worthy of preservation and it is doubtful that they catch the unpredictable messiness of daily life.
Various organisations across the world are trying to revive this lost art: ‘Daakroom’ is an initiative by design students in India to host a letter-writing carnival that encourages people, especially youngsters, to participate in writing a postcard that is anonymously sent. There are non-profit organisations around the world that encourage youngsters to write to elderly people in care homes, to children recovering in hospitals, and just to those looking for company.
Letter writing is proven to have many benefits: from improving mental health, and encouraging friendships to allowing time for self-reflection. It is also relaxing and a reminder of important milestones while giving comfort, hope, and happiness to someone we love.
But most of all, who doesn’t like the arrival of an anticipated, long-awaited message, packaged in a pretty envelope with pages of handwritten emotions?
The writer is Assoc Prof, Dept of English Language and Literature, SQU
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