Love in the Time of Email

- Parting Note -

As I think of love letters, the first thought that crosses my mind is an incident narrated to me by a friend. As a kid, in the 3rd standard in school, he was truly, madly, deeply in love with the Head Girl of our school. So when his friends challenged him that he could not go up to her and profess his love for her, he picked up an old greeting card from home, the ones with the pictures of gods and goddesses on them, and wrote,

Dear Pooja Didi,

I Love You.

From, Rahul

I cannot help but wonder what Pooja Didi’s reaction would have been at receiving such a love letter. But as unusual as it might sound, it still, was a love letter, nonetheless. A love letter is not necessarily a Shakespearean sonnet or a Lord Byron poem. It need not be written on scented stationery in a fine calligraphic hand. A simple ‘I Love You’ scribbled on a post-it can be a love letter too! And it can be a text message or an e-mail or an instant message on Gtalk. Technology today has revolutionized the way we communicate and express ourselves.

Sending a love e-mail does not by any chance suggest that it is less romantic or sincere. Adding face to our emotions are the options provided by e-mails alone like emoticons, backgrounds, fonts, colors, etc. Now, the perfect stationery and calligraphy are just a click away. Thanks to the convenience of e-mails, we no longer have to carry around a pile of letters wrapped in a ribbon if we want to access them anytime, anywhere. But the die-hard romantic would argue that a love e-mail can never beat the anticipation of waiting for a hand-written letter from one’s beloved, the joy of seeing that familiar handwriting scribbled on the envelope, discovering the petals he put into the folds of the letter and the joy of rediscovering those time-worn envelopes, years later, while you are cleaning your cup board. There is a certain romance in longing and waiting, and emails rob the very essence of it.

I have never received a love letter: neither hand-written nor online. But every time I go home after a long break, I dig down into my drawers for that worn out red envelope which holds all the greeting cards I have received ever since I was a kid. And I do not have words to explain the joy I experience when I see them; the writing of long forgotten friends, the faded ink, the musty smell of the paper. I have received numerous e-greetings, but, with due respect for the sender’s emotions, I have never felt the urge to search my inbox and open them again. Which makes me think that maybe I am a diehard romantic. Maybe I feel that hand written letters are more tangible. Or maybe I am just longing to receive that much awaited letter from my beloved. ‘Knock.. Knock.. Knock..’ Maybe it’s my roommate back from shopping. Or maybe……….. It’s the postman carrying a lovely red envelope.. Maybe…………..

Ipsita is an engineer from Manipal University. After serving a microscopic stint at Infosys, Mysore (basically a “life of luxury”), she moved on to pursue her MBA from IIFT-K. Her life is not short of any interesting chick-lit. She is a big foodie without managing to look like one. Relative grading makes her life easier so she can sing, eat, shop and roam around the streets of Kolkata without giving a second thought to grades. Name a character from any movie, book or TV series and she mimics them at ease. Try me, she asks.