Your Eyes are Like…

In Pune, a naturopath is promoting the dying art of writing love letters by hand

Shrikant Mundada had always had an ability to write love letters and it got noticed right from college. He found himself being approached by moon-eyed boys who just couldn’t find the right words to express their love. For a treat in the local eating house, Shrikant readily penned down flowery similes to women he’d never see.

But it took a couple of decades more before he got serious about it. In 1985, this Pune-based naturopathy practitioner decided to host a Love Letter Writing Competition. The first one was held in Fergusson College. “In 1985, talking about love was very difficult. You could not even utter the word. The response to the competition was witness enough that love prevails,” says Shrikant.

Initially, it was an annual event, but in the mid-90s, Pune’s moral police started to voice concerns. “They thought we were encouraging a culture of indecency. It took some appealing for them to let us hold the competition,” says Shrikant. But he decided to change the periodicity of the competition, holding it once every five years. The next one will be held in 2010.

Shrikant, who has published The Book of Love Letters to serve as a guide to those who are deficient in the amorous words department, has numerous observations about the art. His competition is open to all age groups from 16 to 65 years. While his book is popular among Pune’s college students, he finds old people are better writers (leading to the very odd inference that as the need to write love letters diminishes, the ability to write it increases). Also, he says there has been a sea change in the writing itself. “In the early days of the competition the letters were more poetic, now it is written in a matter-of-fact style. Earlier, they were eloquent and had more style. Now writers say it all as fast as they can,” he says.

An informal study conducted by him, found that writing love letters is more prevalent in rural areas. He has a theory on why this should be. “They don’t have access to computers or cyber cafes. The only option they have is to write by hand. Their letters are intense and expressive; more poetic and unhurried in its approach,” says Shrikant. Though nothing prevents someone from sending a love letter through email or SMS, Shrikant is a traditionalist. “A person seems more serious about a relationship if the love letter is handwritten. But the Internet can still be a great friend because words do not flow smoothly even for the well-versed,” he says.

Shrikant, incidentally, has another connection with the heart. He is the founder of the Heart Club, a gathering of those who have undergone heart surgeries and also has a trust called Hriday Mitra Prathisthan, which helps the poor who cannot afford heart surgeries by themselves.

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