“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” – Gustave Flaubert
When was the last time you received a handwritten letter? No, not a “Happy Birthday” scribble in a Hallmark card or a signature on a courier slip, I mean a real letter. The kind that arrives in an envelope, with your name in slightly wobbly handwriting, smelling faintly of paper and ink (or sometimes, let’s be honest, of the curry your grandmother was cooking when she sealed it).
Chances are, it’s been years. Maybe decades. And that, dear reader, is how we know we’ve lost something precious!
A Brief History: From Palm Leaves to Postcards
India’s love affair with written words is older than the postal service itself. Ancient communication thrived on palm-leaf manuscripts, copper plates, and later, thick handmade paper called sanchi. Mughal emperors sent farmans (royal decrees) that were not only official orders but miniature works of art, with gold-leaf borders, Persian calligraphy, and stamps that screamed power.
Fast-forward to the 19th century: the British introduced a structured postal service in India in 1854, making letters accessible to ordinary citizens. The Inland Letter Card became a middle-class staple. For 15 paise, you could send a piece of your soul across the country.
And oh, the telegram! It was the WhatsApp forward of its day, short, urgent, and usually bad news.
The Emotional Weight of Paper
Here’s the thing about letters: they weren’t just words. They were objects of intimacy.
A love letter from the 1970s, folded neatly in a wallet, could survive decades, the ink fading, the paper softening, but the emotions intact. Soldiers in the Kargil War kept letters from home in their breast pockets, sometimes reading them under the glow of a single torchlight in the freezing Himalayan night.
Science backs this up; studies from the University of California show that handwritten communication activates the brain’s emotional and memory centres far more than typed words. That’s why you still remember the handwriting of your best friend from Class 7 but can’t recall their latest Instagram caption.
The Digital Tsunami
Then came email, SMS, and now WhatsApp. Why wait five days for your letter to reach your cousin in Delhi when you can send a GIF in five seconds? Why buy stamps when emojis are free?
Here’s the problem: speed isn’t always a blessing. Neuroscientists argue that instant communication reduces the brain’s anticipation reward cycle, that delicious excitement you felt knowing your letter was somewhere between here and there. Waiting was part of the romance. Today? You wait 30 seconds for a “seen” tick, and if it doesn’t come, you spiral into overthinking.
And while technology gave us reach, it also made our words disposable. A WhatsApp chat from 2019? Deleted to make space for videos. But your grandfather’s letter from 1952? Still in a wooden box, smelling faintly of meatballs and nostalgia.
Why Handwriting Hits Different
Psychologists from Princeton University found that writing by hand forces you to slow down and think more deeply. It’s not just about pretty cursive; it’s about intentionality. When you handwrite a letter, you choose every word with care because mistakes can’t be backspaced away.
And there’s that tactile joy:
- The scratch of the pen.
- The faint ink smudge on your fingers.
- A small sigh after sealing the envelope.
Compare that to autocorrect turning your “dear” into “dead” and you see why letters had fewer misunderstandings.
Across Cultures, Across Hearts
Letter writing wasn’t just Indian, it’s universal. Japanese love letters are famous for their layered politeness; Victorian England had strict rules on stationery color depending on the occasion. But India gave it a unique twist: we wrote in any language we had, often mixing scripts in one page. A single letter might have Telugu, Hindi, and English, with the emotional intensity of a Tollywood climax.
And letters often outlived their writers. In the Partition of 1947, many families kept letters from relatives they never saw again: documents of love, longing, and loss that no cloud backup could replace.
But Can We Revive It?
Here’s the million-rupee question: is letter writing dead, or just dormant?
Maybe we can’t go back to writing three-page letters every week. But could we write one a month? Could we send postcards when we travel instead of spamming WhatsApp groups with blurry photos?
Some schools in India have reintroduced pen-pal programs to teach kids patience and empathy. In 2021, a Chennai NGO ran a project called Letters for Love, delivering handwritten notes to COVID patients in isolation wards, a lifeline for those cut off from human touch.
Conclusion
Letters were slow, yes. They were imperfect, yes. But they were human. They made us wait, think, and feel.
As poet John Donne wrote, “More than kisses, letters mingle souls.” And maybe in our frantic, hyper-digital world, that’s exactly what we’re missing: a way for souls to mingle without algorithms deciding what we should see.
So here’s a thought: tonight, grab a pen. Write to someone, a friend, a parent, even your future self. It doesn’t have to be profound. Just real. In a world drowning in instant messages, your slow, imperfect letter might just be the most radical thing you can do.
P.S. In 1942, during the Quit India Movement, secret letters were coded in poetry to evade British censorship. If Instagram captions today could topple empires, maybe we’d value them more.