Whispers and Words #22 | The Red Letterbox

A day before my vacation came to an end, while I readied my luggage, already occupied mostly with the snacks prepared by my mother, my father had only one thing to add - a stack of postcards, along with an instruction to drop one in the letterbox every week, during my time in school.

I used to be a dutiful son in my childhood days. I did as I was asked. Every Sunday evening, I took a stroll on my own, carrying a written postcard. Where the road from the hostel turned towards our classrooms, there was a huge tree, and attached to its massive trunk was a red letterbox. It was cylindrical and had two openings at the front side. The top opening had a flap that swiveled back on a gentle push, allowing me to drop the postcard. The bottom opening had a small door with a tiny lock on it. There was a certain kind of mystery associated with the entire thing - from the moment the postcard dropped with a hollow sound in the box to the moment it was delivered to my home. I never got to see the postman - something that only added to the mystery. I somehow envisioned it all in my head. Wearing khaki coloured shirts and trousers and a cap to match with it, a man came to collect the letters during my class hours. He opened the lock and out came the letters pouring into a bag. In my head, I went on the same journey, the bag of letters did, through winding roads, crossing forests and hills to a small town post office where another postman, familiar with the name on account of the frequent letters that I sent, picked the postcard and delivered it to my home. My father would come after a long day at work to read the letter, already read by mother. And then he would sit down under the light of the lantern to write a reply using well-rounded Hindi alphabets. His use of Hindi language was exemplary. I often asked him to quit his clerical job to become a Hindi teacher.

In addition to my personal postcards, every month letter writing sessions were organised at my school where all of us were handed an inland letter, and the teacher dictated the format on the board: place and date on the top-right corner, closing with your name on bottom right corner etc. The inland letter was an improvement on the postcard on two fronts: more space and increased privacy. The letter writing session was usually conducted before dinner. It started with silence. Only scribbling of pens could be heard. Some wrote with due diligence, others tentatively. Things covered in the letter varied from food complaints to need of pocket money. The homesick ones enquired when their parents would come to visit. When they come, they must bring homemade snacks. But as dinnertime neared, their beautiful handwriting turned illegible. The silence turned into a hullabaloo. The session concluded with the matron holding a tube of glue in her hand and surrounded by a mass of students, asking everyone to seal the letters and submit them to her.

Years passed. We grew up. The letter writing session ceased to happen once telephones were installed in all hostels. My parents started calling once in a while, sometimes from PCOs, other times from the neighbours' house. Then my father got a cellphone, followed by my mother, and towards the end of my schooldays, I got a cellphone myself. In the flurry of SMS packs (220 messages free per day), I stopped visiting the red letter box altogether.

Then the day after school farewell, while I was packing my trunk for the journey home, I found a stack of postcards gathering dust underneath an old bedsheet.

That evening, I went for a stroll on my own, to the familiar location. There it was, the same old tree with the massive trunk, but instead of the letterbox, there was a hollow outline in the tree's bark and a metal screw that held the box in place. The red letter box was gone. And gone with it, the mystery of the postman, and the anticipation of getting a letter.

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