Do You Have A Pen Friend?

Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife is a well-made, quaint movie. The main criticism that has surfaced is regarding the veracity of the plot – can friendship, and eventually love and marital relationship, evolve just through letters! I feel the criticism came from young critics, because we have stopped writing letters long ago. I am discounting the e-mails and cryptic SMSs that the younger generation keep on sending 10-a-minute. I had a pen-friend in my younger days, whom I have written nearly 400 letters in a span of eight years. Our close and sweet relationship spanned my school days to the University.

The affair, if you call it so, started in a very innocuous way. I was studying at 8th standard at Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission School, and staying at the school hostel. Smriti was studying at a Govt girls school at Siliguri, north Bengal. Her father was a Forest Ranger in one of the reserve forests of that region. She procured my address from one of my classmates, who also hailed from north Bengal. It started with postcards and took more than two years to graduate in Inland Letters. Not that we didn’t have secrets to share, but 15 paise for each Inland Letter was quite steep for our pockets. The era of envelopes came much later and we exchanged photographs after four years.

Sprinkled with poems, rhymes and quotes from famous writers, our letters use to talk about our day-to-day life…me narrating the off-beat incidents at the hostel, home visits, future plans and getting prizes at various competitions, Smriti talking about her relatives, and her weekend getaways to beautiful spots in north Bengal forests. The wait for each reply was with bated breath, often more than that for the exam results.

We ‘loved’ each other, but never ‘kissed’. Unlike Snehomoy and Miagi in The Japanese Wife, we never talked of marriage. May be at that age, boys don’t think of marriage. His parents knew about me, and approved of the relationship (at least she said so), I never mentioned her to my dad. But it’s difficult to hide the regular arrival of letters from Mom.

When I was around 25, past the University, the relationship waned, letters became few. It was more because I got into a new set of friends, busy planning life, and there were other ladies to share love. Time became the scarcest commodity. Smriti complained in the beginning, but later accepted the fate. Towards the end, it trickled down two or three letters in a year. We never met, though the physical distance between us wasn’t more than 400 kilometres. Ironically, later I became a globe-trotter.

Thirty years have passed. Smriti must be a happy and busy mother-in-law by now. She was never so slim, so must have gained considerable weight. She had specs even at school, so her eyesight must have deteriorated too. But for me, I see her smiling face even now, eyes wide open.

Aparna’s movie has a struck a sensitive chord.