How open letters today have replaced chain letters

When I was in middle school, three things were a rage: woven friendship bands, Crax (corn rings that one "had" to wear in the fingers to savour) and chain letters. I indulged in all: Spending hours on end working with threads, licking off the masala from the rings and making multiple hand-written copies of the letters. It never occurred to me that the world would change so much one day that we we'd forget them all, worse replace them with alternates. A ten-year-old girl in my neighbourhood makes loom bands (using colourful rubber bands); she also agrees with me that the only way to enjoy M&M's (colourful button shaped candies) is to let them fly mid-air and then catch to eat: Both the acts bring me some relief. Hopeful, I ask her if she writes letters. "Open letters," she says and the conversation ends. 

I like open letters. They are like community meals. I have written two of these (so far), sans any delivery address but addressed to two (different) branded individuals. It gave me a chance to use the word dear, a word I had last used in school when we were taught the art of letter writing. "Polite, precise and proper," I hear my English teacher say. These always carried a subject, began from the left column and secured one full ten marks, if written the way they were taught in class. I longed to use them to express my inability to attend school or accept an invite to a birthday party but sadly, my father decided we needed a landline at home and just like that my education went to waste. "What a shame," I hear my teacher's voice. 

Nevertheless, I tried my hand at a few, filling up sheets from the letter pads with Michael Jackson, rainbows and Spice Girls as watermarks. These, I addressed to pen friends, who didn't really live oceans apart: they studied with my elder sister in a senior class; the chances of us meeting were rare because no elder sister liked meeting her younger sibling during lunchtime at school. So, by that definition, I made many pen friends and pasted many stamps on envelopes. My parents are champions of spring cleaning so they were happy to see the number of items in the drawer marked stationary (stamps, pads, envelopes, glue sticks) reduce. When Hotmail arrived, it broke their heart.

Postal addresses were hard to remember, postmen hated their jobs and mailboxes were a favourite spot with the birds to make nests. Emailing letters was the best thing that could have happened to us. When we'd played enough with words like "cool", "dude" and "dark angel", we went back to using e-mail addresses that looked like they belonged to us. Internet was not free, costing more than postal stamps, but the loud noise that the modem made assured us that the letter would be delivered to the one addressed. It was a personal affair. 

If any one of us felt foolish thinking of the days when we spent weeks replicating a letter written to Amelie or a John to save a hungry child in Hawaii or extend our support to global friendship, we remained quiet about it. We were all record holders, having created hundreds of imitations, and then "break the chain" was a sensitive topic. Over time, mail service providers, SMSes and Whats App ("An apostrophe is missing," I hear my teacher say) messages only made us more sensitive. 

Today, to prove we are powerful women, supporters of world peace, BFFs, care for flood victims or fear gods, we are now to forward these messages: free of cost, just a click, a touch. At this rate, I feel the children in Hawaii would get obese. 

Now all along, be it a pen or a stylus or a mouse, letters suggested one of the three: They were a personal and polite affair, were to be addressed and delivered to the one whose name followed the word "dear", and could be made public and written to unknown men and women only when the need arose (malnutrition, global warming, cancer, and bad luck being prime issues).

I look at my Facebook timeline; the open letters are defying all rules. "Death of courtesy, cause and communication," my English teacher would say. "The bug bit me too," I'd tell her so, if she cared to listen. 

I begin to feel terrible for the chain letter, if it were around today, it would have garnered all these likes, shares and tweets. It would have made a difference. No one would have particularly cared about grammatical errors, and bad handwriting would have never been an issue. I feel so upset that I open MS Word and write an open letter to the chain letter.

Dear Chain Letter, (left aligned)

I need a cause, I realise, so I title it: The "open" death of freedom of expression. 

I am a fast learner. 

Just then, the girl from the neighbourhood walks in. I close the document. In her hand is a list of ten people she will be writing open letters to, this month (there are just 28 days in this month, I'm tempted to remind her). 

I realise that while she will be making a difference, I will be left brooding over how I wasted my chance to serve my purpose in the world, the one I was born to serve. We need more crusaders like her.

I miss being in middle school. I sigh.

I open the Word document. 

I key in the title of my book, the one which will launch me as an author and activist: "The Best of Open Letters, 2015: A Compilation".

I was destined to make a difference.