Letters in muyye-pai

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I greatly miss handwriting. Reading it, writing it, feeling the handmade paper on which I loved to write. All that I handwrite now is matlabi stuff - such as Post-it reminder notes, and film review jottings. I jot notes as I watch films, it's an old journalistic habit. All films, even the shirtless Salman ones. The only ones for which I tend to skip jotting notes in real time, are films I watch back-to-back on long-haul flights, because otherwise, relaxation feels too much like work. So, after decades of jotting film notes in darkened theatres and later sometimes struggling to decipher what the hell I wrote, now films I watch are mostly on video links or streaming sites at home, with enough light to see what I'm writing.

Marie Kondo, decluttering diva, assigns letters, photographs and related senti stuff to the last and toughest part of any home spring-cleaning drive. My letters, received and sent over the decades, are mostly from friends from all over India and the world. Early ones are from ‘pen friends,' and the American ones, when they sent you their photo, would pose against the American flag. One of my most cherished letters, though, was sent to us by our (late) Papa: my sister and I must have been in primary school, and went every year with Amma to Dharwar, her hometown, for May holidays, while Papa stayed back in Bombay to work. He wrote us the most adorable letters, of ‘what-all' was going on in Bombay, all in kiddie-talk, on that blue inland letter-cum-envelope. He wrote in very tiny handwriting - we called it muyye pai (ant's feet) in Konkani - so he could cram in more news, and his handwriting continued on the side letter folding flap; only the top gluey-licky flap was spared.

Most of my letters are in a large box, with other senti stuff - champagne corks, seashells, paper doilies from cafes in Vienna and the Amalfi Coast; a movie ticket stub for Monty Python: Vie de Brian from Paris days; chocolate wrappers of treats by assorted exes. One champagne cork says: "30 mai '96, Montgolfier, Maintenon." Ah, that was from the time a friend took me up in a hot air balloon on his birthday, in some previous lifetime. Taking off from a field in Maintenon on the outskirts of Paris, we floated amidst the clouds, gambolling with gentle breezes for a couple of hours, before descending on terra firma: the cool company organising the balloon ride had a car, waiting by the field where we landed softly. They popped a chilled champagne, served in champagne flutes on a silver salver, and handed me a magnificent certificate that proclaimed in Baroque French, that I had gone up in a Montgolfier and shown proof of sang froid, etc. Uff! Trust the French to do things in stylish OTT mode.

In fact, I can read my life from my letters. The turning point came when I acquired a calligraphic pen - I still use one now and then. My normally scrawly handwriting quickly acquired grandiose Versaillesy flourishes and curlicues. So I routinely went to Chimanlal's to get fancy letter paper to go with my handwriting. Thanks to the calligraphic pens, writing people letters became an elaborate, even exhausting affair. First, I wrote the letter on a rough pad. Then I copied it in fancy calligraphic handwriting on the Chimanlal's letter paper. After writing 8-10 page letters, I couldn't bear to let it go. So I started to get Xerox copies of the letters before going to the post office to mail them. That's how I have a detailed record not only of what was going on in my friends' lives, but also what was going on in my own life, over the decades.

Many of us have photographic records of our past. But no photographs record the majority of things I described in my letters: what I was doing at that point in my life, how I was feeling, what someone said or did to me, my plans for the future; the small things that give me big joy - lemongrass chai, the enormous raintree outside my balcony, with squirrels racing up and down the tree, chittering all day. I also have friends who wrote me fun letters. Marc Loehrer from Germany, for instance - who is a friend I know more from letters than I do from real life - would also reply with long letters that would include a postcard from a Giovanni Tiepolo exhibition he had attended, drawings, a photo, a Xerox of a linden leaf (because I didn't know what one looked like), which he got from a tree behind the cathedral in his home town of Würzburg.

All I do now, is email and click send.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.

Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com