The routine Dussehra cleanup spearheaded to this nostalgic trip.  Decluttering the iron trunk scattered my old diaries and notebooks.  The old notebook with a set of stamps spread-eagled on the ground before I could hold it.  My young nephew rushed in with the queerness of a modern kid.  His eyes widened looking at the colorful confetti likes at least that is what he assumed them to be.  I take upon myself to explain one of the dignified recreations – philately; how it was considered the ‘coolest’ hobbies those days to boast of and how we fought collecting postage stamps.  I mostly had Indian stamps except a few foreign stamps which I got from a friend.  While narrating to him, my mind slowly drifts into the merry land of childhood. I remember my father returning from office with a bunch of inland letters and some stamps.  At good times, me and my sister shared a letter to write to our cousins.  I started the letter and she ended it.  But when we were cross with each other, we pleaded for separate letters after all we didn’t want the other to know what we wrote or complained to granny or the cousin in far land.  As days went by we got to write every month.  It not only improved our handwriting week by week but also strengthened our bonds with our cousins.  Above all, it is where I first signed my name.  With years my letters became lengthy and I switched over to notepapers, stapled them in order, and enclosed in an envelope.  If it weighed more, more stamps got stuck to it.  It was a moment of pride to see more stamps on your envelope.  Similarly when a letter arrived, we fought to pull off the stamp, competed with each other collecting variety of stamps. Our connection with letters and the postman was inseparable.  Some even became friends.  Predicting when the letter would reach our dear ones and when would they reply was a past time in itself.  Greeting cards were the harbingers of festivals unlike the forwarded messages and discount sales nowadays.  This correspondence ended with our grandparents.  I never wrote letters to my parents nor did they.  We had by then landed in the Information Age.  Letter writing now is a lost art.  Who writes long winding letters these days?  I sigh thinking of those handwritten wonders. ‘Really?’ He was surprised.  I could understand his bewilderment.  Still he couldn’t believe we wrote letters, ‘you guys had all the time in the world to write lengthy letters, here I run out of time to finish my homework, just to tell what happened that week?  How did you do without mobiles?  Won’t it bug Chitthi to know what you did and where you went last week?’ True, it is definitely difficult to fathom our generation.  We were physically miles away, but our hearts were just a letter away.   Secrets were hidden in those letters, happiness was shared in them, they were messengers of love, concern, anger, anxiety, worries, gossips, tears, and surprise.  I think that’s the reason our mothers and grandmothers withstood hard times because they had a source to unwind their woes.  Sentiment survives in what is communicated, but breathes in how it is communicated.  I still cherish a few letters and a tiny collection of stamps as treasure trove of the bygone era to be gifted to my progeny.