Call me Old Fashioned

Once upon a time - when Facebook was not yet born, when people would actually depend on handwriting more than keyboards, when finding a new friend was not just a click away - there used to be a way through which people would make friends: pen pals.  

Ever since the dawn of the digital era, multiple ways of making friends all over the world have emerged, but only the greatest ones have stood the test of time, and writing to your penpal is timeless.

Why?

I can't think of replacing the personal touch that comes with a handwritten letter with anything else, it's real world interaction. A tangible letter from your penfriend comes with a bag full of suspense, a twiddling of thumbs as one waits impatiently for the letter to arrive. 

And I believe so, because my uncle says so.

My uncle, who is now in his 60s, had a pen friend living in India. Apart from sports, the other thing he loved was making friends from all over the world by writing to them. One particular woman left an indelible mark on him, he says. Once he began to interact with her, little did he know the extent to which that correspondence would change his outlook towards books, music, and life. Being a sportsman, he would pass his days playing for clubs and participating in different competitions and contests. When he was not practising, he would be found coaching the neighbourhood kids. But a ligament injury shattered his dream, and his life as an active sportsman came to an end.

When he almost gave up on life, his penpal, sitting thousands of miles away from him, made him love his life once again. For him, writing letters became another creative adventure - going to the GPO, collecting the packets, hunting down the latest books by Bangladeshi writers for her, sending them to her and waiting with bated breath for a response. The discs and books that she used to send him, on the other hand, enriched his collection and he himself would discover, in amusement, how his taste in music and books stacked up against everyone else's. For him, this simple act of friendship was like therapy.

Interestingly, they used to address each other as Mita in all their letters.

Coming back to the modern days, the daily newspapers and magazines have gotten rid of their penpal sections. But if you Google "penfriends" it will bring you a handful of trustworthy sites that promise to seek out penfriends on your behalf for little or no fee. I know parents who are considering having penfriends for their 5-year-old as an artistic outlet to keep her away from gadgets. They have made their own rules, though, for safer and more convenient correspondence; instead of snail mails, they are opting for emails and are planning to carry out this little adventure with an old friend living in Canada who has kids of the same age. 

One of my colleagues is also considering having a penfriend through email with someone she met through another friend on Facebook and never met in person.

Or you could just do it the old fashioned way, like my uncle did in his days, or like the French Queen Marie Antoinette and British Queen Charlotte of Mecklensburg-Strelitz, or like Alfred and Klara from the classic The Shop around the Corner.

Because nothing beats a freshly delivered, stamped and sealed handwritten letter, written just for you.