A journey that began with writing letters

WHENEVER WE FELL OUT WITH A FRIEND IN SCHOOL, WE WOULD WRITE LETTERS

AND SLIP THEM INTO EACH OTHER’S BAGS ON THE SLY

As I sit down to scribble the first draft of my article in my diary, I wonder how many people are in the habit of using pen and paper to put down their thoughts; whether personal, creative or professional.

Learning writing skills is the second step in a child’s education, the first being oral training. In the ’50s, our journey in writing started with that wooden board called phatti or takhti and kalam-dawat. Writing with pencil was the next step; and sharpener and eraser were new wonders for us; in excitement we would finish the whole pencil in a day by sharpening it repeatedly. We were wonderstruck at the thick half-red half-blue pencil that our father brought with his office files, and that two-in-one eraser, white for pencil and grey for ink seemed magical, though we were not allowed to touch those things.

We started with four line copies for English and two lined ones for Hindi and Punjabi.

How strictly it was drilled into our heads to dot the i’s and cross the t’s literally; and to write within the margins; to be particular as to which letter should touch which line. Writing as many pages of writing exercise as the number of holidays in the summer vacation was a drill to improve our handwriting.

Gradually, writing became a hobby. Writing our favourite Bollywood songs in notebooks was the first thing we took fancy to, each sibling having his/her own song notebook. One of my sisters filled copies after copies writing down the scripts of actor Jitendra’s films that were published in some magazines!

Next came the art of writing letters. Whenever we fell out with a friend in school, we would write letters (girls are so sentimental), and slip them into each other’s bags on the sly. We were deft with writing in reverse font, to be read in the mirror, though we could read it otherwise too. It’s another matter that we could speak in reverse as well, irritating our mother no end.

As we moved out for work, writing detailed letters home was a charming exercise and receiving similarly interesting ones from mother and siblings was looked forward to. My brother would sketch scenes and faces, like today’s emojis, in the margins, making the reader visualise the details, too.

While doing Mphil, I wrote a letter with the left hand to my four-year-old nephew who had just joined preschool, telling him, ‘I too have joined school and my handwriting is poor, but will gradually improve, and my madam gives me a lot of homework’. I drew a crying face at the end. He was so thrilled when he saw this and my sister read out the letter to him. This skill of writing letters became a stepping stone to creative writing later on.

Still fond of writing letters, I’ve suddenly realised that there are hardly any takers. But write I must, hence these articles. Old habits die hard!