Good old letter vs the impersonal transient e-mail?:

Is snail mail on life support?

Apart from making philatelists an endangered species, is email in the process of giving the last rites to snail mail?

by Aditha Dissanayake

Allowing that there sometimes may be a necessity for e-cards and e-mail, most people still seem to prefer the "trring, trring', bell of the postman at around ten in the morning at their doorstep, with a brown envelope, to the ting-a-ling- sound the PC makes to indicate they have new mail. The reasons for being in favor of the traditional letter varies from the practical "You only need to check your mailbox once a day" to the bizarre 'I like the taste of glue on the back of the five rupee stamp".

Few would disagree that, when going through the day's mail, the discovery of a hand addressed greeting card or letter from a friend, always brings an expectant smile to the lips. As one who is pretty comfortable on the internet, twenty-six year old Asela Bandara, an executive in a private bank, says "one part of me is tempted to do as much of my correspondence via email as possible ...yet another part of me feels that there is a certain "formality" associated with e-mail and that nothing can replace the feel of black ink on white paper".

Unlike a typed letter appearing on the screen of a monitor, in the form of an email which does not convey the gender, age, or hints as to the personality of the sender, a handwritten letter has a "voice" because unless deliberately feigned the handwriting of a writer conveys much about him or her.

"I remember how eagerly I waited for letters from home when I was at boarding school" recalls Ruwanthi de Silva. "It was like waiting for a present on my birthday. I was full of anticipation. It was the only connection I had with my family and friends because this was when email wasn't the "in" thing. The letters helped me survive homesickness and boredom and I still read some of them".

Creating a bond

Commenting on the fact that nothing can beat the thrill of recognizing a familiar handwriting, especially if you are abroad and terribly homesick, Priyangika who is home on vacation from Dubai says "I don't like emails because an "e-mail from my best friend and one from my boss looks much the same.

The same electronic 'paper', and usually the same font as well. So, the tangible pleasure of feeling the texture of the paper, of seeing the slant of some letters, in fact of even trying to read something that has been scratched out (it gives an excellent insight into what she was impulsively thinking of writing, before better sense prevailed!) - all that is completely absent in e-mails.

Infact, when I fell sick sometime ago I pestered my parents and close friends to send me conventional, get-well cards and letters, just for the love of holding them in my hands and opening the envelope and seeing the sheets of paper neatly folded!". Many feel the bond created by a letter lasts forever. "I still read some of the letters my grandmother used to send me, and whenever I do so, I feel as if she is near me, talking to me. Her handwriting and the smell of mothballs evoke fond memories."

There are times even the hassel of sending a card or a letter via snail mail can be turned into an advantage. The simple fact that you went out to a bookshop or the supermarket to buy a card, and to the post-office to post it shows you cared more. And, unless we have devices like those seen on Star Trek, where an item bought on the internet can be "teleported" to the buyers home, the postal service will be around for a long time to come. Besides, there are always some things that will have to be sent via snail mail, like wedding invitations. And it's doubtful that emails will be saved in the same way as letters are.

Will we ever see books of the collected emails side by side the Collected Letters of C.S Lewis?

Here to stay

"I think snail mail is here to stay." Says the author of "Saadu.com", the first e-novel from Asia. "We all know that while emailing is still faster... there are times when sites go down. And sometimes our own computers misbehave and stop working. Where would we be if we did not have the postal service to deliver a letter we could not otherwise get cos we cannot get on line for some reason or the other?"

But imagine how things would have been during King Kalanytissa's reign if emails had been in use? The monk who was in love with the queen could have easily saved his life by sending her an e-message instead of writing a letter which was discovered by the king.

Thanks to emails, the process of courting, and in general, the whole process of writing has surely become easier. You no longer have to worry about your love letter falling into the hands of a parent or a teacher, or worse, one of your classmates who will pass it around so that a deeply personal epistle becomes as widely known as the news on TV.

Thanks to emails paperless billing is now possible enabling you to make your payments through a credit card without needing to leave your home.

And thanks to emails you don't have to remember a birthday three or four days in advance to send a card. Even if you remember that today is so-and-so's birthday at twelve midnight, you can still save yourself by sending an e-birthday card, with moving pictures, and sound, if you wish, which is miles more interesting than the ordinary card.

Moreover, emails are environmental friendly; the more emails you send, the more trees you will be saving. Besides, you hardly ever forget to send an email once you finish writing it. Letters on the other hand lie around on the sitting room table for weeks waiting to be chucked into an envelope, and taken to a post office for the stamp..

With email, all you have to do is click the send button, and unless you are having a really bad day and your mind is else where, you can't forget to do this! And, if your mind is so far away that you can't hit send, you would probably have written something in your email too that you'd regret later, so good for you that you forgot.

But, does this mean "snail mail" is now doomed? What with bills being paid with a mouse click, photographs, and even lengthy PowerPoint presentations, being sent through an electronic ethereal, is snail mail, (so called because when compared with the seemingly instantaneous speed of email is as slow as the slow moving snail), about to receive the last rites?

No. Because unarguably emails are inferior to a letter sent through smail mail.

Writing an email is like writing on water and begs to be deleted where as snail mail, sans the necessity of fancy gadgets called computers or internet connections with only a few pieces of paper, some drops of ink together with creative words form, instant art.

But those who are email crazy think even though it's nice to open your mailbox and feel a letter or postcard in your hand, which could be place on your desk, or carried in your pocket to be read when ever you feel like it, emails are better because they are easier to use, quicker, and more efficient.

If emails are hear to stay and the snail mail is on the way out, there will surely come a day when your grandma too would have caught up with email and you could send her an e message saying ILY. She will love it if she can decipher what you mean.