From Letter To Whatsapp

“That’s it! Now, touch the Send option.” Gia, a feisty teenager, plonked herself on the sofa after a successful attempt at teaching her grandmother how to send a Whatsapp message. It had taken her a few days of her vacation to start teaching from scratch. Her granny had been a terrible student all this while and she couldn’t help but feel proud of the fact that she had won a long lost battle.

“See, it was so easy. I don’t understand why it took you so long to learn.” Gia’s grandmother Mridula smiled at her as she observed her 17-year-old granddaughter.

“Well, you took an equally long time in holding the pencil and learning to write. I never saw your mom complaining though.”

“Nani! I was just joking.” Gia quickly got up and hugged Mridula from behind.

“Frankly, no matter how modern I become; I will always be a paper and ink person. I fail to understand your SMS and Whatsapp lingo. Lol, BFF, BAE, ROFL. Who even invented these terms? Our times were the best. Letters were the best way of communicating.”

“ Oh, come on! Don’t you think communication has become easier and faster with technology? Who has the patience to wait for days and months to receive a single letter? Now, it’s just a matter of a few seconds.”

“That’s right, my dear Gia. Patience. Patience is the key. Perhaps that’s the reason why your generation has become so impatient. You guys want everything fast, fast, fast.” Mridula snapped her fingers in a quick motion, a sort of reflex to put across her point. Gia giggled. This was going to be one of the many arguments they always had. Your generation Vs my generation.

“ I still remember clearly. When your Nana was in the gulf, I used to wait for days just to receive a single letter from him. We didn’t have a telephone back then. In fact, few people used telephones at homes. Call rates were too expensive and we wouldn’t hear each others’ voice for God knows how many days.”

“ See. We are so lucky.” Gia chipped in immediately. “Video calls are here to rescue us. If you miss someone, he or she is now just a click or swipe away.” Mridula nodded her head, deep in thought partially agreeing with her granddaughter.

“True. But things were way simpler and less complicated in our time. When I was fourteen years old, your Nana was a few years older. Every Friday, on my way to school, he would write me a letter and send it through the hands of a little kid. You can’t imagine my anxiety and excitement for an entire week. It seemed like an eternity till I could receive his letter for the next week and read its contents.”

“Wow! I had no idea Nana was so romantic. What did he even write to you? I agree he is a poet. But how could he always have enough to write? That too, every week.”

Mridula pulled Gia’s nose playfully. “ He wrote to me about everything he could possibly think or feel about. What he couldn’t express through speech, he expressed himself through his words on paper. He was never much of a speaker anyways. In his letters, he bared his heart and soul out to me. His letters smelled just like him. His calligraphic writing was something worth dying for! Who doesn’t like being compared to the moon, the mountains, and the oceans? Especially if it’s from someone you’ve always admired.”

“So, how did you reply back to his letters?”

“I never replied to any of his letters, Gia. Your Nana read me through my eyes and my silence. We were madly in love with each other. Though none of us ever spoke a word.”

“Wait a minute! How can you fall in love with someone you’ve never spoken to?”

“Love doesn’t need a language, child. All it needs is two pure hearts determined on being one. I wrote to your Nana only once in three years. That was the first and the last time as I wasn’t smart enough to send my letter through the right person. Eventually, we got caught. I wasn’t allowed to study further and your Nana was punished at his home too.”

“What happened then?”

Mridula smiled as Gia waited patiently. “We fought for each other till the very end for me to tell you this story. That’s all you need to know. True love does find a way. And even if it doesn’t, it teaches you a whole lot more about life which you never learn the easy way. Every step you take in life is a lesson in itself.”

Though Gia wasn’t convinced, she decided to let go. It had been too much of a listening session today for her.

“Fine. I get it. I just need to know one more thing. Didn’t Nana ever get frustrated that you never replied to any of his letters? Wouldn’t he have wanted to know how you felt about him back then?”

Mridula let out a sigh at her granddaughter’s question. She pulled her cheeks for a minute, annoying her to the core. “Lovers of your Whatsapp generation will never understand the joy and pain of placing your heart on a piece of paper. It takes a great deal of courage and patience for doing so.”