The era of the inland letter

{ RHYTHMA KAUL } Deputy Health Editor

It was after nearly two decades that I dropped a letter into a mailbox recently. Like most things instant taking over my world (barring instant coffee, thankfully), the humble inland letter was replaced by email before I knew it. No matter how much I thank a colleague for presenting me with Daddy-Long-Legs — a book written in 1912 by American author Jean Webster — it still won’t be enough. A teenage orphan’s college education is funded by an unknown benefactor on one condition — that she write to him regularly. Therefore, the book is in the form of a series of letters written by the principal character, Jerusha Abbott, to her unknown benefactor, whom she calls Daddy-Long-Legs. Each letter tells an absorbing story that transports you into the world when handwritten letters were a thing. For me, the book worked almost like a piece of writing that may want me to perform what’s being narrated. Guess that explains my strong urge to post a letter. As the “letter to the reader” in the beginning explains, books are special because of how they can be interpreted in multiple ways by different people, based on the individual’s life phase or state of mind. That DaddyLong-Legs is special is evident from the fact that, a century after it was written, it opened as a musical at the Black Box Theatre in New Mexico on November 19 this year. I am glad I discovered the book. I cannot wait to lay my hands on its sequel, Dear Enemy.