Letter Art

Growing up, I exchanged letters with a group of six or seven people. Two cousins, a grandmother, a best friend who had moved to another city, a school teacher who had to return to Bombay to take care of her ailing parents. Besides the regulars, there were some who came and went of my life leaving behind between two to a couple of dozen letters in their wake.

Browsing through the Envelope Collective gallery, brought back memories of the art work on some of these envelopes, the interesting placement of stamps, the stationery and even the colorful inks that these letters were written in. Sometimes there would be a friendship braid, photographs, a piece of candy or dried flowers and leaves inside. It was exciting to get something in an ordinary envelope that was not a letter - it did not matter what it was.

The letters were written in flowing cursive which all of us seemed to be good with, the borders were decorated with art work. The closer you were to the recipient the more you put of yourself into the letter and that often went beyond the note itself.

I have all those old letters stored in large manila envelopes. The impulse to store and put them away for posterity came when I first realized that I neither wrote or received any letters - over time, the numbers had trickled down , the circle shrunk from seven to two and then there was nothing left.