Letters in Ink

The fondest memories of my childhood are those of writing letters to ``priya Bansi mistriji’’ when the school closed for summer vacations. Baba, as I called my grandfather, would sit with half a dozen yellow post cards on lazy summer afternoons and ask me to write letters for him. It was a vacation ritual that started when Baba was confident that I could hold an ink pen properly. I was in Class V then.
No, Baba was not illiterate. He was fluent in English and Persian but not in Hindi. He could only converse in Hindi but not write in the language. Nevertheless, he preferred dictating letters than writing them on his own, irrespective of the language.
So, I wrote several letters to Bansi mistriji (artisan), whom I didn’t know and never met. The letters were mainly about Baba’s next trip to our ancestral home in Gonda, a few hundred kilometers from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and that he wanted Bansi to come and fix the broken windows and seal the cracked walls in the house. He would ask him to get a plumber along. ``The water taps could be leaking,’’ he would reason to me, looking excited at the prospect of his visit to Gonda, which was still a few months away.
He would sit on the edge of the bed and I would sit cross-legged next to him. For me, it was an important assignment and I would meticulously keep the postcard on a cardboard (the one I used for my exams) and write the letter with my new ink-pen. In my best handwriting, I would write to Bansi mistriji to drop at 4 pm sharp on December 2. I wondered why Baba was sending the letter in May when he was planning his trip to Gonda only in December. I realized much later that Baba had no other way to pass his time. Dictating letters to me took care of at least 30 minutes of a rather eventless day. Also, writing letters to Bansi mistriji gave him a valid excuse to talk about his house in Gonda that he loved so much but could not live in as he was too old to stay alone there.
It’s another story that Baba would come back from Gonda rather upset with Bansi for not having turned up on the scheduled date and time. ``How can he forget? I wrote to him much in advance,’’ he would grumble. I didn’t blame Bansi mistriji one bit.
But, those were not the only letters I wrote during my vacations. I wrote to important people as well including the Prime Minister and the President. I remember Baba signing these letters with a flourish.
But, these letters were sad. Baba lamented how the country’s leaders were indifferent to its sluggish progress. ``The best roads and buildings came up during the British Raj. Look at the condition of our roads now,’’ he would dictate to me in an emotionally choked voice. He would then comment on corruption, the long queues for gas connections (this was in the early 80s) and then he would add his favourite question ``did we fight for independence for this day?’’ I wrote this question several times in several letters for several years. At the end of his dictation, he would read the letter, point out how my handwriting needed improvement and then sign it, his hand shaking with age, ``Lalta Prasad, retired station master’’.
(pic from google images)