“Dad, you know mom is away. Yet, you don’t always consider it and scold me. It hurts,” wrote an eighth standard student, whose mother is away in the West Asia, in a letter to her father.
Her classmate’s letter, which was confessionary and emotional in equal measure, sought to reassure her parents that she will never go in pursuit of the high of drugs and how much they mean to her. “Mom, I know I am often impulsive and burst out; yet you always forgive me. I have a dream of securing a job and looking after both of you just like you gave up many of your dreams for my sake,” she wrote.
Parents of over 3,000 students of the SNDP Higher Secondary School, Udayamperoor, Kerala, will be receiving such letters tugging at their heartstrings in the days to come after they were posted en masse coinciding with the National Postal Day on Tuesday. This was the latest initiative by a school that had always tried innovative ideas to engage their students beyond mere academics.
“Initially, the idea was to get students to write to parents reassuring that they will stay away from drugs. However, it was expanded to be an emotive communication between parents and children. We also wanted to connect children who were used to mere micro messages on mobile phone with the now largely extinct process of letter writing, which used to play a crucial part in human bonding in a bygone era. That just one higher secondary student had ever heard of a postal inland was an indicator of how disconnected this generation was from the nostalgic process of letter writing,” said Smitha Karun, the teacher who came up with the idea.
While the idea was finalised as far back as June, sourcing 3,000-odd inlands proved far too tough. A call too the Ernakulam head post office also didn’t help. Thoughts about writing on normal paper was instantly abandoned as it didn’t have the same emotional quotient as writing on an inland while postcards were considered too restrictive. The school principal K.P. Vinod Kumar’s persistence with the help of a parent T.P. Satheesh with the Panampilly Nagar post office eventually succeeded.
Class leaders collected the letters and accompanied by a delegation of teachers led by school headmistress M.P. Natasha and PTA president K.R. Baiju posted them at the Udayamperoor post office. Teachers T. Sarju, Ajesh K.P., Lakshmi Bose, Roopesh T.S. also accompanied the students.
Postal officials led by postmistress Rama P.K were equally excited to receive the students as they took them around familiarising them with the post office functions. Students also get to seal the letters on their own, which amused them no ends.
