Letter Writing - A lost art?

The keyboard replaced the pen and the screen replaced the paper. The elegant writing styles that marked the character of an individual are replaced my ready-to-use fonts of extensive variety. The bitter sweet anxiety when waiting for weeks for an epistle from loved ones is replaced by the anxiety due to inaccessibility to the internet in order to retrieve instant e-mails. The world is changing at a pace faster than one can blink their eyelids.

Communication has accelerated with a speed that would put even the wind to shame. But somewhere, somehow, I feel a cleft when I get e-mail from my friend instead of a personal hand-written letter. Though I agree that at any stage the speed of e-mail outwits any ordinary post, yet the very thought of receiving a manual letter throws me into buoyant spirits.

When a lady, clandestinely writes a letter to her beloved, it carries with it more than just a superficial matter on paper. The loving strokes of pen on paper remind her lover of her slender fingers stroking him. The contact made by her hands with the paper reminds him of her tender touch. Her redolence is carried across the envelope to tantalize the senses of her beloved. A letter is more than just any quotidian piece of paper with ink splashed all over it. An old-fashioned letter brings out the actual human qualities of a man. A letter can reveal the writer’s attributes. The technique of writing, the penmanship, the pressure applied while inscribing, the strokes of the pen—personify the author. It is as though the concerned person were talking to you directly, telling you about him. A letter imposes an inimitable bond between the writer and the reader. Not just mushy romance letters, but also friendship letters, condolence letters, heart-breaking newsletters -- often ameliorate the a dicey situation and fill the void of your absence instead of instant e-mails which prove to be more impersonal at these instances.

This is but a unilateral discussion. However the pleasures of penning a letter, putting it in the envelope, writing the address and affixing the stamp appeal to me much more than, clattering away words at the keyboard and clicking a “ send “, under the circumstances where speed is not a criteria.