Thursday, September 18, 2014

Tribute to an Old-fashioned Letter Writer from India

In an essay posted yesterday, Aman Sen from Massachusetts writes of "The Art of Letter Writing in an Ancient World" about the letters his family used to receive from his grandmother in the 1970s.

Like Aman, I had a grandmother who expected responses to her letters. Though my Granny may have been happy with typed letters as well as the hand-written variety, she would rarely write again until you had answered her last letter. My grandmother and I grew up in the U.S., and Aman writes of growing up in India and of the traditions he experienced there, but I get the feeling grandmothers are much the same world-wide. And, they all seem to enjoy a hand-written letter from their grandchildren.

Aman's story is one worth reading. And, who among us can't help but love the name of the site he's writing for, The Aerogram!


2 comments:

Jenny said...

My husband wrote handwritten letters back & forth with his grandmother for over 40 years. (I wrote back & forth with her about 20 years as well.) He kept almost every letter she wrote to him too.

It started when he was around 4 yrs old. Her letters followed him from his childhood home, family moves, college, marriage.....After we married she always wrote specifically to each us, often in the same letter. Then, after her great-granchild came she always added a note just to him, usually telling him what the dog & cat were doing or something about his little cousins.

My husband, being her oldest grandchild, spoke at her funeral. He spent days digging through boxes of old letters & chose one to read. We could all hear her voice as he read, telling us all the local news, who had a new baby, where someone went on vacation & how much she missed someone. what was growing in her garden, how much she enjoyed lunch with her sister, what they ate & how they laughed together..... And ending with a story for our son about the dog playing in the mud puddles & getting into trouble. Just ordinary days but it's the ordinary days that mean the most in our memories.

Anonymous said...

This has to be one of the most moving posts I have read about the power of mail in a great while. Thanks for this. I saw pieces of me throughout. I'm still smiling. This grand was/is indeed venerable.

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