My penfriending days

This is my friend Angie Spicer from Illinois, USA, whom I had corresponded with over the course of seven years. We had a lot in common, the strongest being the love for writing. The last photograph on the right was published in a newspaper in 2003, when one of her books won a Carby's National Literature Award in the category for young fiction.

The hobby that I have pursued most in my life is writing and I mean it, literally. I have written more letters than war veterans writing home to their girlfriends. I am looking at my desk right now, staring at the beefy folder exploding with letters, postcards and photographs of all my 65 penfriends. There were few things that brought me more joy than a thick stack of mail awaiting in my letterbox, from friends all across Brazil, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, Romania, Libya among many others. I would open each letter hungrily, and each such letter would countain a fixed itenary of things.

1. Letter- (of course)
2. A FB or a Friendship book
3. Address card
4. Postcards/phonecards/stamps/photographs etc (optional)

I can't believe how many days and nights I used to spend poring over those letters, absorbing every detail (and at times trying hard to decipher broken english) and planning about the little package that I would have to deliver back to the person. One of my German pen friends called Steffanie Rothmier had once sent me a tape of popular german songs and I remember getting into a tizzy regarding what to send her! I sent her a packet of ready-to-cook gulabjamun!!! Hhahahaha! Then there was a certain phenomennon called the 'Friendship book' that would be a small booklet adorned with shiny stickers and splattered with glittering ink that would contain a string of adresses of people of whomsoever had recieved that particular friendship book and it would pass on and on, almost like a chain letter but way cooler!! I once recieved one that had 200 addresses on it! I remember printing and designing letterheads to write on, and making a list of my favourite celebrity crushes, and of course like any teenager, I practicised my signature..like...about...a billion times! I had a business card at the age of 9! Sometimes I used to send them portaits of what they probably looked like in my mind before formally exchanging photographs with them. These memories are sugar-coated and nestled in a part of my mind that shall probably always remain alive and writing.