: A lost art #IndiaNEWS #Feature The joy of receiving a letter from a khaki-clad postman and the excitement to know its content can’t be compared to the pop up texts on smartphones, says Adhyapak

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Posted in: #IndiaNEWS #Feature

A lost art #IndiaNEWS #Feature
The joy of receiving a letter from a khaki-clad postman and the excitement to know its content can’t be compared to the pop up texts on smartphones, says Adhyapak Biswaranjan, a noted litterateur, orator and critic of Odisha

Hindi blockbuster Naam, released in 1986, had set quite a few milestones. While it was the comeback vehicle for actor Sanjay Dutt who didn’t look back after that, the movie propelled Mahesh Bhatt into the big league following his art house movies like Arth and Saaransh.
But the chief attraction of the movie was Chithi Aayee Hai, a number sung by ghazal singer Pankaj Udhas, who also appeared on screen for the first time. The song became so popular that viewers in theatres would often demand for a rerun after the show. No wonder, it went on to be listed among the 100 songs of millennium by BBC Radio. Reason: The song resonated with people’s feelings as the lines were more about human emotion, nostalgia and family values.
This was the time when communicating with loved ones using digital media was not even a part of people’s thoughts. Letter writing was the ultimate medium for distant as well as intimate communication. But with the advent of the information age and its modern communication channels, letters have now become part of a lost past. Students at schools are taught about letter writing skills but with ‘text me’ fast replacing ‘write me’, they don’t get a chance to communicate in real life through letters.
Perhaps we are not too far from a time when one can see the letters only in museums. However, here’re a few people who continue to write letters even today. They share with Sunday POST their thoughts on the significance of letter writing and how snail mail is more meaningful than any mode of instant messaging.

Enriching literature
Writing a letter is like telling a story which makes you experience something that modern communication channels are unable to offer, says Netajee Abhinandan, Head, Department of Political Science, Ravenshaw University. He also is the Editor of Chithi (Letter), a quarterly literary magazine that publishes the letters which have some kinds of historical values, significance and a bearing on the way people live or evolution.
Netajee says, “Chithi basically wants to establish that
like poems, novels, short stories, epistles are also part of
literature. �
Elaborating more on the significance of letters he adds, “We publish letters which have some universal significance like letters between litterateurs, having debate on literary issues or some kind of dialogues on literary problems, a letter written from a mother to a son or from a father to a daughter but that doesn’t contain only the routine aspects of life but must have some universal values and significance.

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