“What is it with him? He won’t reply to messages. He won’t attend calls regularly and won’t even bother calling us back. But, he wants to send postcards as if he is a social animal.”
This is what so many people who know me well would have thought when I said I wanted to send postcards to people I know. Even I would have thought the same if I were in their place. Thanks to the social quadrant of my mind. It always works weirdly. It was just a little trigger that made me write those postcards. I am hoping to write more, let that be. We should travel a little while back to 2019 to understand a bit more about the trigger.
2019 was kind of a revelation for me. Two major things happened in my life. One, I joined my current organisation and the other, as I already gloated enough, I did my first himalayan trek. Apart from the economical, physical and all other million aspects of those two things, meeting the people that I know today would have to be the collection of moments that tilted my world to a better direction. Both things had an equal impact in the birth of these postcards.
The people I met in my organisation taught me the importance of empathy and consent. If not for them, I would have sent the same postcards to the people without asking them if they even wanted to receive one. My intention could have been to surprise them. But, may be that could not have been received well. All surprises are not good surprises. Well, for the empathy part, I was thinking about how the postcard could brighten up them even if it is for a few minutes when I was writing them. Imagine yourself being in a random place either a foreign land, a relative’s home or wherever and surrounded by too many random people whom you couldn’t get along with. Suddenly you meet a person who calls you by your name and talks with you for a few seconds even if it’s some customary exchange. He/She may be an acquaintance, a friend or a ‘I met you somewhere’ person. But, it will ease you up for a while right? At least I will feel so. I wanted to bring the same feeling to the people to whom I send those postcards. Again, this was only a chain reaction of the trigger that I was talking about.
Now coming to the main trigger, I have talked and wrote a lot about my himalayan trek. So, I am not going to bore you with those details again. But that was when I met Pranav. He was our trek leader. His motivation was one major factor that made me and even some of my fellow trekkers to complete the trek. He was jovial, inspiring and a lot more for one to look up to. At the end of our trek, he gave each of us two postcards and told us to write it to him or friends as per our wish. He was a lover of personalised notes as he quoted that he would even print some of the text messages and paste it in a notebook if it meant to him. I did send a personalised note to him but on whatsapp. I completely forgot about the postcards and I was not even in touch with him frequently.
Fast forwarding to October 2021, I received the news of his death while trekking somewhere in Maharastra. I couldn’t digest it and hoped it to be a rumour and would be some other Pranav. It wasn’t. I felt bad for a couple of days and moved on. This is what I don’t like with all deaths - we all become helpless and would not be able to do anything else to change the situation. But again, that’s what a life is. Even then I never remembered anything about the postcards.
December 2021, when I was packing for my recent trip, I wanted to reuse some of the items that I bought in 2019. That’s when I found those postcards. And that was the trigger. I had a little breakdown of sorts. I really don’t know what was that about whether it was Pranav’s death, the inevitable uncertainty or whatever. That’s when I decided I should send some postcards to people who would want it. People, who are close to me, know that I am a sucker for handwritten notes and I used to send letters sometime back. So, in a way, it was my homecoming.
After my trip, the same idea turned out to be printing the postcards with the photos that I have taken to give some more personalised touch. Still there might be questions about this whether it is a remembrance of Pranav, it is an initiative to encourage writing, it is to show my kindness or something else. Honestly, I don’t know. It is yours to interpret. But I can say that I am selfish enough to brag about the smiles that I brought to a few people through the postcards (from the responses that I got). In a world full of uncertainties, I wanted to be that one happy uncertainty even if it lasts for a few seconds. That’s what I think.
0 comments:
Post a Comment