Tags:
Journalism of Courage
When was the last time you wrote a handwritten letter? Last week, as my elder sister8217;s wedding drew near, my mother insisted on cleaning cupboards, sorting huge pile of books and many such assorted things at home. As I cleaned up the mess, I noticed several handwritten letters lying in an old folder.
They ranged from postcards sent by friends from their vacations, grandma8217;s birthday cards and letters, small notes scribbled hurriedly and stuck on the insides of a greeting card, chits passed during laborious history lectures in school. In this frail yellowing pile, neatly tucked in a shoebox, I found something rather amusing 8212; a collection of letters from my 8220;pen-friend8221;, exchanged more than 12 years ago.
Painstakingly noting the address in the class notebook, one came back home only to write a dozen copies of the same letter, introducing oneself and requesting to be added to their 8220;pen-friend list8221;. It wasn8217;t always that you were lucky, at times one wouldn8217;t hear back at all, after which it was time to move on 8212; to the next edition of the teen monthly.
I wrote a dozen letters to potential pen-pals in Norway, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, Russia and Turkey. Thank God, it was the post Cold War era, and we had more countries to write to! Somehow, we always harboured doubts regarding some of the addresses that seemed to be strange permutations and combinations of English letters. However, my anxious attempts at finding a pen-pal in faraway lands bore little fruit. A few months later, I found a pen-friend, a little over 100 miles away from my hometown, and, of all the exotic places, in the capital 8212; Delhi!
