it's the corniest excuse he could have given her. when anita sinha asked her boyfriend, ankush, why he didn’t ever write to her, he mailed back, “because you may elope with the postman. lol” she didn’t. “and btw,” he continued, “why do you need a letter when i mail you so often?”

anita, who lives in a hostel, studying management, says, “i didn’t realise the power of the written word till i left home last year to come here.” the first letter from home, a long missive from mom with do’s and don’ts, is amongst her most precious possessions. “i read it dozens of times because it was a tangible connection between my mother and me,” she smiles. “i still have it, although i’ve not kept all the other letters from home.”
get the message?
in an impersonal, competitive world, anita and her batchmates check out their personal pigeonholes every time they come in from class. initially, they would feel a little sheepish to be caught in a show of sentiment, but now, “we whoop when there’s mail. sometimes, we’ll flick a friend’s letter and offer to exchange it for a treat. of course, we’d also swear aloud if there’s been none for some time.”

to drive her point home, anita wrote ankush a delightful, spontaneous letter from class — interspersed with notes on finance — and posted it. now, about once a month, ankush actually sends her a card or a letter. giggles anita, “that’s because he likes to receive my letters, and knows i won’t write unless he does.” she thinks of novel ways to make them special, beginning from one corner and writing along the edge till she reaches the centre.

dharni siddhu who’s married to a merchant navy officer who’s normally away from home nine months in a year says, “in today’s age of instant communication, i would be worried or consider him thoughtless if he didn’t e-mail me regularly or call every day he touches land. i would also get upset if he didn’t write occasionally.” as she points out, the e-mail panders to just one sense: sight. dharni takes a printout of every mail he sends her and keeps them carefully, and her mailbox is stuffed with his mail from the previous month, since she can’t get herself to delete his mail so soon. but the printout looks like a printout. without his handwriting, it doesn’t have the same impact. she has a special camphor chest in their room for his communication which she has partitioned for his e-mail printouts. “but when i want to read his previous letters, i find myself reading the hand-written snail mail, not the impersonal printed notes.”
the written word



a written letter has many more advantages. your hand-writing is as much a part of you, as your photograph. it has distinctive quirks — how you cross your t’s or squiggle the q’s — which create a one-to-one association. most of us, even those who think fluently when composing on the computer, find a softer line of thought unravelling when we put pen to paper. “when we argue, he pulls out some letter where i’d gone soft on him, and we end up laughing,” grins dharni.

after that, the only excuse not to write could be, you don’t want to see laughlines crease your partner’s face!
write right
get those letters going with these easy, but essential pointers.

the ground rules are simple. just a little bit of imagination will take you a long way. for starters, think of yourself as the receiver. the rest will follow as night does day.
the perfect romantic letter ought to be written on the most gorgeous paper. go on, scour the market for some sheer papyrus.
match the ink rather than go for a predictable blue. a pink sheet could have purple, the colour of royalty. and if you’re doubly careful, read up on colour therapy to help you select.
here comes the crunch. what do you write? exactly what you feel. that’s the safest, since not many of us are blessed with poetic talent. simple prose often works better than verbose quotes from the elizabethan era. besides, if you’re writing a love letter, you ought to know a little of the recipient’s likes and dislikes to guess topics that would melt his heart.
steer clear of controversies. even if you’re longing to get that slinging match going, on who didn’t answer whose last e-mail, refrain if the letter has been sent on a special occasion.
is your paper perfumed? not even your ink? the sense of smell may count for barely 20 per cent of our total awareness, but it works enough for a chartbuster film to be named, ‘scent of a woman’. pick up your signature fragrance and spray it on.
make sure the letter reaches on d-day. a day later, and you may have been pipped to the post!