A Multiplying Letter

And correspondence

Ritu’s Letter Gets Longer! by Mala Kumar, illustrated by Henu

It might be an idea now lost to time, but once people used to write each other letters. Not having any other comparable means of communication, and with the post coming at least once per day, on time, they wrote each other letters. If you want to understand a historical figure — and if their letters survive either entropy or careful destruction — you’re best advised to read their correspondence. American historians of the beginning of this century thought they had invented the correspondence, and reading it as a source. They talked so much about it.

It paints this or that historical figure, already known broadly for other reasons, in such a different light, they rhapsodised. It humanises them. It shows their domestic travails. Whether they loved their wife or husband. What vexed them, what comparatively trivial thing made them compose long, specific replies. For certain creative types, the memos they wrote about why the studio heads were wrong, memos listing what needed changing to make the picture even half-salvageable, covered the same ground. Gave a similar spectator’s view to history in the making.

These days, in my experience, only demands for money arrive via the letterbox. Your bill has gone up; you need to pay the taxman; now the taxman’s charging you interest on money you didn’t know you owed because our previous letter got lost.

The personal spark is gone.

Now most people of all ages send each other texts and instant messages. Those forced to by law or convention send emails. Letters are, unless you’re a lawyer, a different thing again. The prime minister probably receives ministerial resignations via email, with a Docusign scrawl or a pre-printed template appended to the bottom. But when it’s posted on Twitter by both parties, these things are formatted as a letter, even now.

It’s one of those holdovers from an earlier time, from a decorousness that no longer exists or has reason to exist. A formality, a convention, something faintly recalled from another point in time.

I suppose we all think on occasion of the letters we should have written but did not send. To friends now dead who did not have any other way of communication at distance. To people whose work we admired, again possibly now dead, to whom a letter, via a publisher or an agent or a label, would have been the appropriate way of making a declaration or registering appreciation. An opportunity to ask questions and even to receive answers.

These chances, once lost, are never to be regained.

This book is a simple one, and it’s about a postcard, not really a letter at all. Ritu, a little girl, is sitting with her grandfather who is about to put a postcard into the letterbox. The postcard is being sent to Ritu’s aunt, and has something to do with a cousin, a cousin Ritu’s fond of, coming to visit from what we must assume is a home far away.

I think you’re old enough to post this one yourself, Ritu’s grandfather tells her. Go all the way to the letterbox and speak to the man with the handlebar moustache. You know him, don’t you? He’ll make sure that the letter goes where it’s meant to go.

Ritu asks him if the man with the moustache — she calls him uncle, but she calls everyone uncle and aunt — will cycle all the way to deliver the postcard. But her grandfather says he won’t. He’ll just help it on its way.

So Ritu sets off with the postcard (accompanied by her dog). She’s off to the letterbox. It’s a whole street away from home — and she’s young enough that this is an event. Ritu very much wants her cousin to visit, and so, when no one is looking, she takes out a pencil and writes a variation of ‘please’ on the postcard, for the attention of her aunt.

Eventually, she finds her way to the letterbox and looks up to the opening where you put the letters (and postcards). But she’s not tall enough to deposit the letter. She looks around and, wouldn’t you know? There’s the uncle with the handlebar moustache. Ritu goes over to him, entrusts him with the postcard, and mentions her situation. He promises to help but before he hands it over to the postman, he takes out a pencil of his own and writes something on the postcard himself. Ritu thinks she can see him smiling as he does it.

When the postman appears, it’s the same story. The postcard is handed over, a word or two is exchanged and then, when the postman glances at the letter, he too smiles and takes out a pencil of his own and writes something on the back.

Ritu goes home, confused by what’s happened, but sure that her postcard will arrive at its appointed destination.

And soon, a letter arrives from her aunt. Ritu’s cousin will be sent soon to see them all. And the letter was interesting. It had twenty versions of the word ‘please’ on it. Every person whose hands it touched had added a variation of their own.

So the postcard arrived as planned, and became more emphatic as it made its journey across the country.