Cure of an Addiction

I loved to receive letters but hated writing them. In old days in India when I was young and foolish, several sheets of neat rounded words from my female cousins were eagerly looked forward to and I spent more time on my response than I could afford. In later years, my fiancée and I exchanged frequent letters which were treasured till the hurried evacuation from a war torn country caused them to be turned into indecipherable ash. However, there were also the letters from my mother that I dreaded to open. The content was always the same; “You never tell me what you have been doing. I want to know all about your hostel life…. .” The complaint was fully justified. The letters home were exactly the same every time, “Things are fine here, lot of home work….,” you get the idea. These were the days before copying machines were common, otherwise I would have sent a copy from the master draft and saved some time for letters to my fair cousins.

After I got married and settled down in the pleasant life of the head of a growing family, cousins went by the wayside. For decades all my correspondence was related to the business; formal, short, to the point, dry as a bone. Being a man of few words – if you keep your mouth shut the foot stays out – this format suited me and I became quite good at it. Then all of a sudden it came to an end. I was booted upstairs and others wrote the letters for me to sign.

After some thrashing about, a new outlet for my talent for concise expression of opinion dawned on me – Letter to the Editor. I am a man of many interests, none all consuming but enough to read the variety of articles in the newspapers and magazines. A person once dear to me compared me to a wide and shallow lake – I can express an opinion on any topic under the sun, under the clouds on a rainy day, but can not write a well argued essay on anything. So what can be better than to write a couple of lines about a news story or an editorial? Sometimes I would commend, sometimes find faults. It was always brief – no wasted words. And it was always prompt – the letter was in Editor’s inbox within an hour or two of my receiving the newspaper or the magazine. Many of my letters were accepted – perhaps because they were short and ideal space fillers.

After a few years my name became familiar to the serious readers of Canadian media. I came across strangers who had seen my name in the paper although they could not remember in what context. Once in a while they did remember it and an unpleasant debate ensued. On occasions my letters displeased the family members. However they are forgiving individuals and I escaped with an apology for offending statements. But the urge to have the name in the media every week was hard to overcome. Let us face it, Letters had become an addiction.

There is no Letter Writer Anonymous for poor addicts like me; we have to struggle on our own. We don’t even have the sympathy of our families in this battle. There were times I managed to go without submitting a letter for a few days but even before a full week had gone by my resolve would crumble and letters would start flowing from my computer to esteemed editors again. During one withdrawal period my good wife suggested that if I worked on longer pieces, say stories or essays, my focus would shift and I may even write something of enduring interest. Well, I did write short and not so short stories and essays. A reputed publisher published a collection of stories that sold a thousand copies. I even wrote a novel. Yet the flow of letters continued unabated. Till one day a couple of months ago!

Our national newspaper has a policy of publishing just one letter from any individual in any thirty day period. Once a letter is accepted, submissions hit the delete button for next twenty nine days irrespective of their content and quality. When I became aware of this policy I sent the next letter on the due date – thirty days after the publication. If it did not please the editor I sent another the next day. It was rare that I needed to try for the third time.

After a decade of letters in the Canadian media at regular intervals my contribution has not appeared any where for long ten weeks. At first it was not for the lack of trying. After my third letter failed to appear in the aforementioned national newspaper I sent the fourth, then the fifth and so on. After ten letters I stopped to take stock of the situation. The writing on the wall became clear after staring on the blank screen for a while. My style had gone out of date, there were too many young bright writers for my contribution to stand out, my opinions were becoming like an old LP stuck in the groove. Could be any of these reasons or could be a combination. In any event one thing was clear – my letter writing days were over.

It is six weeks since the last letter left my computer. Good bye addiction, good bye Editors. You won’t have my letters to delete any more. Sorry readers – if you really miss my letters, sincere apologies.