The Joys of Having Pen Pals And Writing Letters

For those who have never heard this term before, a Pen Pal or a Pen Friend is someone you have never met (or maybe you have), and with whom you exchange letters regularly. I suppose I might as well explain letters too. A letter is something you write on physical paper and mail using an envelope with the required stamps on it. The letter is delivered to the destination by the Postal Service. The Postal Service is…never mind!

A chance conversation took me down memory lane and brought back a rush of childhood memories of letter writing and pen pals. While I was gushing about all the stories from that time, my teen daughter was sitting there open-mouthed. All this seemed like something from the dark ages I suppose. When there was no Internet! How did people live?

Oh, we lived well. We didn’t miss what we didn’t know of.

Letter Writing — A Wonderful Hobby

A long time ago, many of us did not own a phone. For the longest time, we used to hand out the neighbour’s phone number to close relatives for emergencies. And if anyone called, the neighbour would call us over. We’d go to their house and receive the call. No one thought it was odd. It was the done thing.

With no means of regular communication, my cousins and I used to keep in touch via letters. It was super fun.

Seeing the postman on the road was exciting because there was a possibility that he was holding a letter for me. Seeing him at my gate used to make me almost burst with excitement.

Then the thrill of actually receiving a letter, opening it carefully, reading it, narrating parts of it to mom, other parts to friends, all of this was a sweet experience that cannot be explained. It has to be felt.

The envelope containing the letter was never torn open in a hurry. There was some satisfaction in finding a pair of scissors, cutting the edge carefully, and then spilling the letter out. Today’s folks may never understand the pleasures of such delayed gratification!

A brother-sister duo used to write to me separately because they had different things to tell me. Of course, I wrote to both separately too. Because, hey!

Since we wrote fairly regularly, I accumulated lots of letters from various people. There was no question of throwing away old letters. I still have them all somewhere, sorted by person, and numbered in order of arrival!

The Craze for Stationery

Nowadays, there is a profusion of really good stationery of all types all over the place. Online, offline, everywhere. You can buy the craziest or the cutest of envelopes, note pads, and whatnot.

A few decades ago, it was not so simple. Or maybe it was. Too many choices always tend to complicate matters.

There was no online world. We had to buy everything off physical stores. There were no malls or huge stationery shops back in Bangalore.

My friends and I used to frequent this chain of shops called Archies. Sometimes we’d go a little further up to these two amazing bookstores — Gangarams and Higginbothams. All such visits were like a visit to Disneyland (which we had not heard of at that point). We could spend hours browsing through the letter pads, pens, stickers, and other mind-boggling stationery items.

Compared to today, the choices were definitely limited back then. But it still seemed like a lot. Should we buy plain letter pads? Or the ones with designer borders? Or the scented ones? Or the ones which came with matching envelopes? Of course, all this within whatever available pocket money and budget we had.

Without our knowledge, we honed our decision-making and finance management skills :)

And those sheets of stickers. I recently gave away a whole bunch of them that I had preserved and carried from house to house. Apart from writing letters to dear friends and cousins, I also loved to add a personal touch by including stickers with images or text that they would ‘get’.

Foreign Pen Pals

During those times, it was quite the craze to have pen pals in foreign lands. ‘Foreign’ itself was such an exotic word.

We didn’t know much about the culture in other countries. So the chance of having a living, breathing person to correspond with, was an amazing opportunity to learn so much more.

An organization called International Youth Service (IYS) operating out of Turku, Finland was responsible for seeding this Pen Pal bug!

The organization had a form that we had to fill up to indicate from which country we wanted a pen pal, and what age, gender, etc we were looking for. IYS then matched requirements in their database and sent us our new pen pal’s contact information. All this was by regular mail, and therefore took weeks and months.

But it was worth the wait!

A couple of my cousins had pen pals in Finland and France. The whole family waited for information about these pen pals. Everyone knew of those folks, their names, and a lot of other fascinating trivia about Finland and France. The French pen pal eventually visited my cousin, who in turn brought her to all our houses. She had become a family friend.

I had my own share of pen friends from Singapore, Germany, and Finland. Receiving those long blue and red striped envelopes with ‘Par Avion’ and ‘By Air Mail’ was the highlight of the day.

Of course, in those days, this was not a cheap hobby. Air Mail was expensive. But there were so many tiny and interesting advantages, that our parents didn’t mind indulging us in this hobby.

Sometimes the envelope would have the most exotic stamps. At other times, the letters would come with a pressed flower or handmade bookmarks. These moments would tip us over the moon. Life was simple, and such small gestures from faceless people gave us such immense pleasure.

Occasionally, we would get over our hesitation and shyness and share our photos with each other. It was awesome to be able to finally associate a face to this friend.

The whole process of finding a pen pal, establishing the first contact, building rapport, and sharing life events, was at a tantalizingly slow pace. I think this was magical and cannot be replaced by anything similar in today’s age. A slow dance of sorts!

Sadly, after impacting so many lives in so many ways, IYS closed down in 2008.

The Charm of Letters

In a non-connected world, pen pals opened up our minds and allowed us to see different cultures through the eyes of locals. It was a hobby that ever so gently helped us step out of our otherwise sheltered and closed lives.

I kept in touch with my pen pals for years. But somewhere along the way, life caught up and the pals faded away.

That’s the advantage of today’s world. Unless somebody absolutely doesn’t want to be found, we can find lost friends easily and stay in touch.

The old style of letter writing and waiting had its charm. It was exciting and added a touch of old-fashioned romance to the hobby. Today’s communication absolutely lacks all that. However, it more than makes up with its ease of use and quick and permanent access.

And yet! I wish letter writing would make a come back. It had its own allure!