Malinda Words: You've got mail?

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 222nd article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

‘You’ve got mail’ is the greeting that AOL users receive when they get a new email. Today it would be called alert or notification. Time passes, technology changes and connectivity and conversation acquire new meanings. ‘You’ve got mail,’ back in the day was quite fascinating. This is perhaps one reason that the romantic comedy film by that name became very popular.

So yes, email was new then. Voice-mail and video calls were yet to arrive. Personal computers and laptops were rare. People still wrote letters to each other. People still used pens. One day all these things including mobile devices may go out of fashion and even out of circulation. And maybe there will be people who will think back on all of this with nostalgia. As some think of letters, letter writing and putting pen on paper today.

Nostalgia over hand written correspondence may explain the abiding popularity of Nick Bantock’s ‘Griffin and Sabine,’ an epistolary novel, i.e. a story written as a series of letters between fictional characters, which was first published in 1991. It was followed by ‘Sabine’s Notebook’ and ‘The Golden Mean’ in 1992 and 1993 respectively. These books came with letters in envelopes that could be taken out and read.

The correspondence is as fascinating as the unique design which included beautiful illustrations. It is a love story of sorts. And that’s one of the most charming uses of ‘written letters.’ Love letters, somehow, are warmer (or cooler) than text messages declaring absolute and everlasting love, one might say and others might wonder what on earth it’s all about. Time passes, things change, after all.

I remember a time of postcards. There were the ordinary, matter-of-fact and cheap postcards that were used to convey some bland information which anyone could see. There were picture postcards and it was a joy to receive them. My father, whenever he traveled overseas for conferences, would send postcards from places we had heard of but had never seen, not even in pictures. The cards would be addressed to one of his children, but the message was for everyone. And everyone read and delighted in reading, our mother included.

The legendary bibliographer Ian Goonetileka used to write to my father off and on. He sometimes wrote postcards but mostly he wrote letters. He recycled envelopes, turned them inside out and inserted the letters. Fascinating handwriting.

Handwriting. That’s part of the charm. It’s a signature of sorts that you really can’t wrap an email with. Voice messages are better in this regard.

Letters were precious to me living far away from home in an era before announcements such as ‘You’ve got mail.’ It was something to look forward to. It was a delight to receive letters. It was also good to write letters. Not everyone likes to write. My parents never wrote to me when I was an undergraduate. They did send birthday cards. I didn’t write to them either. I sent them cards. I had other people to write to. Yes, that age! Those life and death things that are sometimes central to being young.

Writing is hard. I mean, writing by hand is hard. It’s hard when you have got used to running your fingers across a keyboard. So much faster. So much faster and also, editable. You can delete, copy-paste, highlight and do all kinds of fun stuff. Writing on paper using a pen, in contrast, is pretty straightforward with limited ‘options.’ If your handwriting is poor, it’s an added headache for both sender and receiver.

And yet, in these AI days when you can type a few key words, press ‘enter’ and obtain a well-written love letter, for example, or even a love poem that’s ‘original,’ there’s something to be said of the unpretentious hand-written love letter. Sure, you can transcribe the AI-generated ‘love’ letter and fool the recipient, but such deception can never last.

One day, for example, the recipient of a poem could tell something like this to a ‘lover’ who deferred to AI: ‘you have sent me such beautiful poems, darling, you are so talented; so could you write me a poem right now, a poem where you mention sunrise and dew drops, a rainbow and a child’s smile — just mix it all and write on this piece of paper a poem unlike any that has been ever written.’

A good memory and a bit of creativity might get you out of jail, but you’ll be outlawed sooner or later. Far more honest, honourable and appealing would be to write what you can in your bad handwriting. It will have heart. It will be saved in the heart and not in some file in a hard drive.

Someday, soft copies could be considered as tangible as hand-written letters were to a people of a different generation. Maybe that’s how it is even now for most young people.

Speaking strictly for myself, I still write. Handwrite. There’s me in the words and there’s me in the ink that moves in particular ways and takes residence upon a piece of paper. I just can’t email such things.

14 September 2023

You've got mail?

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