Once in two-three days, against all hopes, I go to the reception to check whether miraculously there might be some letter lying there addressed to me. And without failure, there doesnt exist any. An invisible sigh comes from within my heart and I go back to my daily chores.

I still remember the joy of receiving a letter. Since I came into my senses, this is the longest I have stayed at one place. After each transfer, I used to send letters to my friends. The most beautiful moments were when I used to come home from school and find a letter addressed to me from my friends. But eventually the tradition used to fade away.

Now the things have changed a lot. We have mails, social networking sites, chat clients, and what not to stay connected even with the friends we barely spoke to. Compose->type mail->send, thats all we need to stay in contact. And the worst part is, you dont even need to remember birthdays, or anniversaries. They even have e-greeting cards to be sent. I just hope that the process is not so automated that it sends the e-card without you even knowing it. It is all a by-product of capitalism, the idea of mass production. Quantity rules over quality.

What we forget is, the more time and effort we spend on something, the more we get attached to it. The letters carry a personal identity of the writer with them, which is lost in the zeros and ones of the computers. Feelings can never be transferred over the internet, and without feelings all forms of communication are just worthless. They are just a formality.

Nowadays even books are being digitised. I wonder why anyone buys such books. You have to strain your eyes to read them. You cannot smell the scent of the freshly opened book. You cannot see the pages turn yellow when the book gets old. And you will never find some flower or the feather of peacock inside the pages, which someone might have kept inside for you.

We are becoming increasingly impatient. We dont want to enjoy the journey, we need to be at the destination. We prefer a 2 hour flight to a 24-hour train journey. We like to watch a movie on the computer and finish it off soon, instead of going to the theater.

I once had a dream. I was in a world similar to the Axiom spaceship of the movie WALL-E. Everything was computerized. People dint even touch or see each other. They had their computer screen for all communication. I was so scared. In such a world, somehow a girl put her head on my chest, her head touching my chin. I felt a shock through my body and woke up with my heart beating fast.