The romance of letters

The romance of letters

Travelling through time, as we grow up, is an interesting experience . As you look back in time you see the sharp contrasts in how we have lived our daily life in the distant past.

Recently my niece went to Britain for higher studies. The momemt the plane landed there we got the message of her arrival , with photographs, on our mobiles.That's the magic of smartphones.

In 1952 my fufajee went to England. In those days  there were no mobiles, no internet and travel by air was uncommon and prohibitively expensives and so were the international telephone calls. He went by ship and took a long time arriving there , posted a letter which arrived here after so many more days.

But those were the days of the fine art of letter writing. His letter described his journey by ship, the people on board, the food he ate and so many other experiences. It was a delightful eight page letter on light blue writing pad sheets in his beautiful handwrting. We read that letter, and those that followed, so many times over the years.

we don't write family letters anymore ! Those were the days when the call  of   P.O.S.T.M.A.N.N.N . . . .
made us rush out in excitement !
we seldom see a postman now. He is a vanishing species. The telegram man has already passed into history.

Letters have a great value as historical records. Here is Mahatma Gandhi writing about the condition of the third class railway compartment as he travelled in one.

https://www.catalign.in/2012/10/gandhis-3rd-class-railway-travel-during.html?m=1

And there was a time, earlier still,  when there were no toilets in railway bogies! One had to rush out at a station to attend to a call of nature and rush back in time to catch the train before it moved out of the station. Here is the historically important and very funny  letter that resulted in introduction of toilets in train bogies.This 1909 letter from Okhil Chandra Sen to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal is credited with  installing toilets on India's trains. The image presented here is the version displayed at India's Railway Museum.(see photocopy of the letter below)

Alas there will now be no such  letters to preserve for posterity !

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