‘Handwritten’ makes all the difference

Maneet Singh Sarla

I am an avid letter writer, and strangely so, even in times when instant communication challenges the idea of a whole manual process, I continue to receive handwritten letters, notes and cards. With time, I have been able to draw a fair degree of comparatives only to believe that seeing the handwriting of a loved one brings much of the richness, warmth and strength hidden in the message as compared to the synthetic nature of instant communication. Taking a cue from a prominent work of a band of rock artistes called ‘The Dark Fruits’, I decided to name our tribe ‘Authors of Affection’.

During my sophomore year at Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, I visited a retired English teacher, a voracious reader who became visually impaired with age. She was bedridden in a small infirmary on my way to college. What could be more depressive for a reader with a failed sensory organ? I would stop by and read to her every single day. With time, I also read to her neatly written letters by her brother who resided in England. She would interrupt and strain to every fibre of her anatomy to get a glimpse of the handwriting. While I responded to the letters on her behalf, she scribbled a sentence or two in the end to endorse that the letters, by all means, were ‘authored’ by her.

Once, I received a frantic call that a dear friend from my school days in Darjeeling had attempted to end her life. She was undergoing a traumatic experience of a failed marriage. I drove all night from Jaipur to Chandigarh, only to see her eyes gleam with a smile. Her wrist was finely stitched and bandaged, and with that, the sting of the emotional and physical pain had disappeared. There were friends fooling around, and her bedside was pleasantly scattered with notes of concern and affection, gifts and flowers. My favourite among those was a bracelet with a handwritten card that carried a verse from a Kellin Quin song. It read, ‘Sweetheart, wrists are for bracelets, not for anything else.’

I admit I have seen more failures than moments of joy and success. But, in hindsight, these failures have left enough room for hope to continue stalking me. When I joined the publishing industry, my first assignment was to work on a manuscript that hadn’t come to fruition for over two years. Every editor had messed up. Most of them had finished their M Phil, whereas I was an undergraduate. To handle high-end academic works, I felt I was at a disadvantage. A friend sensed what was going wrong and wrote me a note that braced me up. I studied all pieces of communication alongside the manuscript and deciphered that the manuscript was perfectly fine. The editors had overindulged.

My discretion proved to be unerring when I sent the authors an unedited manuscript to which they happily responded that my arrival had turned around the entire process. It had restored my confidence. The handwritten note from my friend read, ‘You must never get discouraged. It is often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.’