Friday, August 27, 2010

Musings at noon




Early this week, on the 23 August I and C lived our twenty second anniversary of our wedding, and we were in Thiruvananthapuram with my mother. In fact, the melee that life is now, we nearly forgot about that day.
Twenty two and one half years ago I was given an assuring blow by Cupid. And some eight months down we got married .At home it was a very inconvenient and unconventional decision that all had to live with because I was marrying a Christian. To me, and fortunately for C the trappings of Hinduism and Catholicism were not even a remote matter of interest and concern. The 'isms' were trivial in the mundane affairs of live.

We were in touch throughout those five months before the wedding either by telephone or by letters through mail (post). There were moments when people glared at me irritated and furious as I occupied telephone booths at public outlets for minute’s together (wish there were mobile phones then and in those times).
We exchanged by post one hundred letters each, and hand written too. And they all are still kept safe .I have not read them since. Feel that it will be like revisiting a sort of infatuation of those days! 

I wonder if the new age of computer and email, of mobiles and text messages  would provide the personal touch, the passion of the heart  and the feelings in  each alphabet, word and sentence that we store in those two hundred letters that were exchanged. There was nothing in those two hundred odd letters that denoted or even distantly alluded to the whims and influences of Aphrodite or Eros. I guess they were somewhat refined and reasonably matured exchanges. Towards the wedding month, we mutually agreed not to be in any contact what so ever from the August 1, until the day of the wedding.So the letter writings and phone calls ceased from then.


Relationships are sadly and increasingly being frivolous in the age of sms and emails. And exchange of letters and text messages would sound and   feel like writing, sending, receiving and reading business correspondence. When one received a hand written letter, one could see in each letter and word the image of the person who wrote it. There was nothing impersonal and everything was vivid. Even the Post man who ventured with the much wanted and awaited mail was seen as the harbinger of good tidings and a welcome figure at the gate.

But as life moves on and we become antediluvian and anachronistic, may be one day we will  retract into our confines and read those letters from the times  Cupid  stalked us. Which I' m certain will not be damaged by spy ware, malware and viruses.And perhaps we may in those letters see our star struck and dumb founded faces again.

17 comments:

sujata sengupta said...

I agree 100% to this. I remember the way my mother used to wait for the postman every afternoon for a letter from her home, the postcard or the inland brought such a smile to her face. Today that whole age seems lost. Everything cannot be just a click away..there are certain things worth the wait! Happy Aniversary to you and your wife! Lovely photograph!

Balachandran V said...

Yeeah! Lovely! Should have added that there were two friends of yours standing in queue right behind you! :D

It brings to my mind my own amorous adventures of yesteryears! I even had to scrounge for money to buy postal envelopes! Yes, like you said, writing by hand had its charm and genuineness. We wrote, not with ink, but with heart's blood... Of course, in this age of SMS love, we are anachronisms.

I keep the letters I send to Parvati( and to me) during our whirlwind romance. When I read them, I blush!

P.S. Don't ask about letters to previous commitments! :D

The Holy Lama said...

Voila. We see C. You two make a beautiful couple:)
There is nothing like good old postman delivered letters. Holding on to something, reading, putting it on chest and dozing off, searching for it- all these are possible only with those letters.

RGB said...

Happy Anniversary. Love the picture.

You're absolutely right. Writing by hand certainly adds charm, worth treasuring a lifetime. And this age of computers, emails, sms-es...have taken the sheen off it!

Insignia said...

You two make a lovely pair.

Hand written letters and hand made cards are special; the anticipation and the excitement to read them can in no way match these SMS and phone calls.

You should dig all those old letters and read them. It will be definitely worth it :-)

deeps said...

Sweetly superb…
At a time when most of the relations are mere formalities, yours seem to be a class apart and truly and experience to share for others to be envy about….

Many more years to go certainly :)
By the way, this goes hand in hand with ur last post given the fact that you been churning out sweet old memories … great going…

anilkurup59 said...

@sujatha
Remember even the good old Red ubiquitous Post Boxes have vanished.
If we harp on these bygones the present generation will mock.Thanks for the message.

@Bals

Ha I like about that "the previous commitments"

@The Holy Lama,
You said it . But you will be classified as old timer.

@RGB

We are a minuscule.Thanks for the comment


@Insignia
Thanks.
Ye some day perhaps relive them. But wonder if the mind that travelled far since those days will be fascinated by the matter of youthful times.

anilkurup59 said...

@ Deeps,

I see stronger and powerful expressions from you for the age you are .
Thanks for the comment, I cherish it

A New Beginning said...

Congrats Anil, and thats a beautiful picture of both of you. God Bless:)
Yes letters have a a very personal touch to them, but the sad part is, nowadays even if the letter is important, the post man saves it for an occasion when he could get some extra money...my dad's passport was delayed this way...
But then this doesnt take away the essence of a letter, its truely amazing...I remeber having a pen friend and then I got her on face book :)
Maybe in this day and age we feel closer to sms, it serves in every mood and makes everyone just a message away...everything has its good and bad but feeling remain the same :)
A very happy Anniversary to both of you :)

anilkurup59 said...

@ New Beginning

Yes sms and text messages do keep people in constant touch.But similar is the new vogue of electronic library. Where you down load and read books on the computer.
Can you imagine that?????

Thanks for the comment

sm said...

Happy Anniversary

anilkurup59 said...

@sm,

Thanks . Do come again

amalg999 said...

I am poor at remembering birthdays and anniversaries. I wish you a belated happy anniversary and many more to come, each one, better than the one before!

Now, with regard to handwritten mails and emails, I would say that TIME is the real culprit. Those days, it was a normal act to write with pen and paper. After all, we were brought up with it through our school and college days.

Today, the pace of life is much faster and so things seem to be normal to send emails or sms'. Each period had its own method. The days before the pen was the period of the quill. As we had moved away from the quill to the pen, nowadays, we have, ALMOST, moved away from the pen to the sms' and emails.

In all these changes, the heart remains the same, today, as it was in the days of yore. By 'heart' I mean the true love and not the infatuation which often goes by the name of 'love'. The lovers heart beats the same as that of Shah Jahan's heart did beat for his wife Mumtaz and as other lovers, through history, great and small.

Today, it is true, we do not wait for the postman to bring our letters. We await to hear "You have mail" from our computers ! The heart beats just as much as it did beat down the ages !

anilkurup59 said...

@ amalg999

Yes but love mails or messages that people wait for on their computer pos out sometimes with a bag full of virus too.

Arun Meethale Chirakkal said...

Vow! Beautiful. Nowadays we’ve everything handy, but then, we don’t know the value of them. We are flooded with modes of communication, but how many of us actually communicate. I belong to a generation which has seen everything changes so rapidly. Perhaps, no era in history might’ve witnessed such drastic changes. ‘Here it comes and the next moment it’s gone’ kind of a scenario. I can’t remember when I saw the postman last. Thanks for the trip down memory lane

amalg999 said...

Virus - the price of progress and the handiwork of egomaniacs, who hide behind their software walls, doing harm to people who don't even know them, let alone, harm them !

anilkurup59 said...

@amalg999
Electronic virus - guess they are safer to deal with than the bipedal viruses.