Love for letters…

An email from my mom the other day led to this blog..

It was in the 90s’ summer holidays that I developed a love for letters, when I used to be dropped off at my grandparents’ in Ahmedabad. Those wonderful days of getting letters delivered by the postman! Letters from none other than my mom; magical letters they were! They spoke to me in her voice, they reflected each expression on her face! Mom’s one who loves getting into details and how! She knew the cartoons I watched, the books she’d packed along with me to read, the friends I’d made in my previous holiday. Her letters enquired about them all. She’d ask me how many mangoes I’d gorged on each day and how many times I’d bathed! So you can imagine! Her routine phone calls included all those questions but nothing came close to the excitement of receiving and reading those letters! In my replies, I’d obediently answer each question in my then scrawny handwriting, always lying about the number of baths! 😛
Apart from my mom, I also received occasional letters from my cousin in Abudhabi. A fan of her handwriting, I would re-read her letters and admire the way her alphabets stylishly swayed!

Times changed, internet entered our lives. The eight year old letter-lover turned into a teen and the postman turned into a Yahoomail.com but that didn’t alter anything.
The summer of 2005 I spent in the US with my maternal uncle. My friends and I promised to keep in touch through emails. Every morning, with eyes barely open, I’d run to the laptop to find my inbox bubbling with mails from Mom and the friends. We’d exchange the most trivial details but the joy of finding ‘mail’ in my inbox excited me the most! When I returned home, I was amazed to find all those emails neatly printed and filed by mom.

Three years later ‘Where Rainbows End’ happened…

The novel, a birthday gift from my friend, was entirely written in the form of letters, emails and instant messages, thereby intensifying my craving for letters! The friend was only glad to fulfill my wish and thus began another phase of letter-exchange and I became ‘Buttercup’. It became a weekly ritual; leaving letters on each other’s window!

Over these years I’ve come to realise that I can only truly express myself through words ‘unspoken’. I’m horrible with phone conversations, so most of you already know. Most of the times, the person on the line can sense my boredom from my tone and choice of words! The only fights PP and I used to have before wedding were about my almost monosyllabic phone conversations! He’d perpetually get a “nothing much” in response to his “what else!?”! 😛

I even got him to forcefully write me a letter before our wedding… How difficult is that!? Though I believe PP’s opinion differed on this matter because he’d rather have got me the most expensive gift than do something as impossible as writing a letter!

I think if there were a day to come when the entrepreneur bug bit me, I’d start my own LMS – ‘Letter Magic Services’! Till then it’s ‘Liger Management Services’! 😛

Are you guys wondering what use is my ‘CA’ degree going to come, when all I want to do in life is write letters which have absolutely no connection with numbers!? Try ‘figure’ing it out! pun intended*

P.S. Dear Mom,

It’s been your complain forever that I never consider your opinion and always go my way or the Dad-way. You dreamed for me to become an Architect or a Doctor or do the damn MBA. What did your darling daughter end up doing? C.A. Don’t worry though! This is just a temporary setting. What I dream to do is a result of those seeds you planted years ago. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have discovered my love!

So Editor-of-my-blog, Cheers!