Post Office Blues

I had stopped at signal at a place I don’t usually pass through. Maybe it was a slow Sunday or I was just in a frame of mind to actually notice something, but in all these years I never realized a post office existed here, dated 1923. Considering everything adjacent to it, it stood out like a relic from another time thanks to it’s sloping roofs, ledged wooden windows, the aged stone façade and that intricately designed central motif.

When I came back home I got me thinking about the last time I actually went to the post office. My memory failed me. I could say for sure that it was the time before internet and email had proliferated our lives. I remember sending a letter to the USA meant going to the post office getting it weighed and affixing it with the right postage before sending it off. The stamps were just as interesting as the whole process.

These days I never send mail and the only letters filling the letter box are credit card statements and utility bills. So I was truly delighted twice in the last few months to have received 2 items that were not any of the above.

One was a thank you letter from my cousin in New York thanking me and my family for attending her wedding that happened all the way in the Mexico. It was an amazing experience to sit and read through it. When I told my cousin about it she was surprised about how long it actually took to get to us. Turns out that it was posted more than a month ago. It was certainly worth the wait. It made me miss the written letter so much. What’s worse it made me realise that I don’t even write personal emails. They took the effort to write and mail a personal letter to all their guests.

The other surprise was when I had signed up for a very cool concept by author Jenna Matecki. She is a nomadic writer who lives in different cities for a few months at a time.  She ties up with local artists to send an illustrated postcard to anyone who signs up for it. It’s free and you can sign up no matter where in the world you are from. I had signed up and totally forgotten about it. So it was a nice surprise to find a postcard from Mexico in my mailbox. It was beautifully illustrated and such a pleasure to read. When I messaged the author about it she said that postcards have arrived in India even before they arrived in the US. It’s a real mystery how the global postal network actually works.