“is the only device to combine solitude with great company”…

This one is to my best friend from middle school days … Avijit Bose in Perth, Australia.

The fountain pen used here is from China.

This started in 1983. August of 1983 to be precise. My first letter that I wrote to my best friend – Avijit Bose. I had moved to a residential school for my last two years of High School and he had stayed back in our home town of Durgapur.

Now we are a bit further apart. He is in the Southern Hemisphere, I am in the Northern. He is in the Eastern Hemisphere, I am in the Western. He is in Perth, Australia. I am in Atlanta, USA.

If you notice the picture very carefully and zoom in, you will notice that both of us are writing with fountain pens. In fact, that is how the whole thing got a restart. Early July, Avijit had posted in Facebook about the three new fountain pens he had bought. I had suggested that it might be a good reason to get back to our practice from thirty seven years back.

So, towards the end of July, I wrote a hand written letter (you see the picture) to Avijit. Admittedly, thirty seven years back, I did not have a glass of martini next to me. That letter took three weeks to reach him in Australia. Fortunately, his response took only two weeks to reach me. Those days, he did not have an iPhone to take a selfie that would make him look like a southpaw either 🙂

So, why this rigmarole of communicating in a way that takes multiple weeks to reach (and daily checking on Whatsapp if it has reached 🙂 )?

Because tradition is not the worship of ashes… it is the preservation of fire!

Writing letters to all and sundry with fountain pens. Before the advent of emails and such, this was the way I kept up with all my friends and family. And even strangers!! In fact, in one instance, I met one of those pen-pals after 30 years of starting our pen-friendship!

For those who complain today that I write too many emails… well, even in those days, I would sometimes write a dozen letters a day!!