EVOLUTION OF LETTERS
resolved the differences between two people,” he says. Recently, he wrote a letter for a young man whose girlfriend had not been taking his calls, replying to his Facebook and WhatsApp messages for six months. “The boy emailed us the note with some background on what went wrong. We penned an emotional letter, ending it with the hope that she would reply. And his girlfriend did reply,” says Anubhav, whose firm writes 35 letters a day, half of them lover letters. He has a team of in-house and freelance writers who have “both good handwriting and empathy”. “Most of our love letters are from boys to their girlfriends. We also hire professional calligraphers to write beautiful letters,” says Prahlad singh, a software professional, who founded Callyally.
Recently, a man living in Dubai requested Verma to write a letter to his wife in Kerala to mitigate her sense of loneliness as they had been living away from each other for months. “Relationships in India are more complicated than in the West, and so there is greater need for conveying emotions in writing. Many people cannot vocally express their feelings to their loved ones... That is where letter writers like us help,” says Verma.
Why would people outsource writing personal letters? “We all like to handwrite and receive letters from our near and dear ones. But these days people do not have time to write, buy stationery and post letters,” says Singh. The first recorded handwritten letter was by Persian Queen Atossa around 500 BC
In 1840, Britain introduced the first prepaid stamped postal delivery service
The US introduced a limited postal service in August 1842 followed by a uniform 5 cents charge in 1845 and standardised stamps in 1847 Before that letters were delivered by a courier, coach or horse rider and the receiver of the letter had to pay on its receipt
Paper was invented in China, in 105 AD
The style (pen) used in ancient times was made from wood, metal or bone The ball pen was invented by Laszlo Biro in 1940s NEWDELHI: IAS officer Udai Pratap Singh has been appointed as vicechairman of Delhi Development Authority as part of senior level bureaucratic reshuffle effected by the Centre.
A total of 12 additional Secretaries have been appointed in central government departments. Of them, eight are IAS officers and rest from other services.
Forest service officer Ashok Pai has been appointed as chief executive officer, National Waqf Development Corporation Limited.
Singh, a 1984 batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, is at present working as additional secretary, Ministry of Tourism.
He has been appointed in place of Arun Goel, who has been named as additional secretary and financial adviser in Labour and Employment Ministry, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said.