WHY I STILL WRITE LETTERS

When I was young, distances held two people close. We longed to see each other, voices and words were memories we slept with, a photograph was the ultimate secret we hid in our books or wallets; these were days before people started putting their feelings and everything else on display on facebook and twitter. In those days, a letter was a gift of love, an undeniable proof, a treasure more valuable than diamonds. We wrote, tore, rewrote them till we were content that it conveyed our feelings.

You would wonder why a person writing a blog on internet, is talking about such things. It all started one morning when I inserted a round piece of plastic in a slot and a soft voice spoke to me in lyrics which made my eyes go hazy. I was driving to work on a lonely stretch of road and the music haunted me.

"Eh tere pyaar de pattar, main awein saambh rakhe ne..."

These letters of love, I still have kept them safe... 

What words... The ghazal sung by Jagjit Singh Zirvi engulfed me and as I kept hearing it, it amazed me more how different the meaning was from what I initially thought it would say. Who hasn't heard the famous Jagjit Singh sing "Tere Khat".

"Tere khushboo mein base khat main jalaata kaise,

Pyaar mein doobe hue khat main jalaata kaise..."

How could I burn letters filled with the perfume of your touch,

How could I burn those letters soaked in your love...

In times, when a face is a click away and the voice reaches you through the small box called cellphone, people live lonely lives though surrounded by things and people they think they love. We yearn for privacy after putting our lives on display, we yearn for display after hiding our profiles, we want to hear I love you when we type ILU, we laugh out loud in abbreviations, and cry in emoticons. There was a time when we waited at a teashop to catch a glimpse of someone... sometimes the wind carried her perfume and the knowledge of her coming before she arrived. Letters were written, but never delivered, love was expressed in smiles, and remembered for years.

As Lord Byron had written to Lady Caroline - 

"If tears, which you saw & know I am not apt to shed, if the agitation in which I parted from you, agitation which you must have perceived through the whole of this most nervous nervous affair, did not commence till the moment of leaving you approached, if all that I have said & done, & am still but too ready to say & do, have not sufficiently proved what my real feelings are & must be ever towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer."

Do you think you could convey this in emoticons and abbreviations?