A season for colour
Those split-second, frantic searches for wallets and keys before leaving home aren’t unfamiliar to most of us. For Nivendra Uduman this checklist includes a stack of hand-written letters. Generally, he returns home after a long day minus a few letters, having left them where ever he felt compelled to. Either in an envelope stamped with #LetterEathlings or in plain ones, this has been Nivendra’s way of spreading positivity since his College days in India.
During his time as a psychology student at the Christ University in Bangalore Nivendra shares that he “did some writing for a website.” The stint as a content writer is what exposed him to two of the retreats he took part in. For the purpose of inspiring and inculcating kindness as a way of life, the retreats are what got him thinking of ways he could do his part.
The fruits of his newfound inspiration left this ‘ghost-writer’ with a bazar habit of leaving letters and notes around for people to find. Ranging from short notes of encouragement to sometimes speculative letters spreading love, the little pockets of heartfelt penmanship w daily scattered around campus. “Sometimes” he smiles, “I would leave a note and hang around until someone finds it.” Covertly hovering around crowded spaces like a water dispenser against which one of his letters were propped, the smile on a reader’s face he says was enough fuel to get through the day.
Nirendra
Sprouting out of his deeply gratifying hobby is Nivendra’s project Letter Earthlings. Celebrating not only the “dying art of snail mail” as he puts it, the effort started off as roping-in friends to experience the satisfaction he did. “We had about three meetings in India” he says after which there was a silence of about one year. Senashia Ekanayake who was also a student in Bangalore at the time sat in on one of these letter-writing circles. It didn’t take much to sell the cause to her because it was an exercise she indulged in anyway. “While I was in India I used to write letters to my grandmother, ” she says.
The number of bills in the post is enough cause for the special place a hand-written letter has for her. Admitting to have a history of stuffing envelopes with all kinds of post-friendly surprises from confetti to poppers she says “the very idea of a letter sadly has been romanticised a little too much.”
Currently helping Nivendra re-ignite Letter Earthlings in Sri Lanka following his return, Senashia and Shalindi Pandithakoralage have managed to put together three gatherings since the beginning of the year so far. “We take requests for letters” anonymous or otherwise, she tells us. Submissions can be made, filling out a form to be found on their Facebook page. Gathering these requests, the Letter Earthlings host a monthly gathering in which anyone could participate in penning down these requests. The last gathering has been inspiring for the team.
Senashia
“We had about 20 confirmations of Facebook, but didn’t think they’ll all show,” she discloses. With a full-house of 22 writers, some of whom the team didn’t previously know, emotionally investing in their letters, the event she says “was very different to most other social gatherings.” A success for more reasons than one, it was also celebrated by the team as being the first gathering to produce a few letters in Sinhalese as well. Penning down requests inevitably lead to stories that the team has strongly related to. “I once had to write to the family of a Pakistani student.” Relating to the sentiments that shroud one while living away from home for the first time, telling a family that the distance will be worth it when their child returns home a graduate was an all too familiar experience Senashia shares. “After putting the words on paper you feel a special connection,” it rarely matters if anyone reads the letter at all.
For Nivendra, every story is unique. “Even if you can’t relate you can always empathise.” The request for a letter to be sent to a Sri Lankan student in Pakistan however seems to have stuck with him. Getting frustrated and wanting to give-up, mid-course is a feeling which hasn’t escaped him during his time abroad, and encouraging someone in a similar place he says is a relatable effort.
Letter Earthling is a “generosity funded project” he tells us, and letters are posted free of charge all over the world. Branches of Letter Earthlings are operative in India thanks to some of his friends who have taken-up the cause and in Dubai as well. A three month young operation in the country, plans for the future aren’t massive he says, but hopefully include a stall at popular fairs, and request/pick-up boxes at coffee shops.
Working with an NGO and running a private practice, Nivendra is a counselling psychologist. A long day’s work however turns him into a writer who enjoys slowing down and “spending time with yourself.” Apart from “keeping the post offices in business” there is much for him in the journey of a letter. “It’s symbolic and special because writing one involves touching the paper,” and its subsequent journey passes several hands until finally reaching the reader’s.
Finding it a therapeutic release to inspire others with his words it seems highly unlikely that his habit of slipping a letter into a letter-box, under a windscreen wiper or simply leaving it on a chair at a coffee shop will come to a halt any time soon.