Mailbox, where are you? :(

**Random filler before I find an apt mailbox to click**

Mailbox- now thats easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy as Namnam would say! 🙂

At the sound of it, rather at the sight of it when I checked the topic for today, it seemed like an easy prompt. Now how difficult is it to find a mailbox around? But I realized as I went checking around my compound and then frantically along the entire drive to and back from Namnam’s school that not a single house or building had anything that looked even remotely close to a letter box.

Had I been in India I would have found so many! They are aplenty there! Then I wonder, is it really the case? Are letter boxes truly in use nowadays? And as though to stamp my doubt further, R points out,‘C’mon, you wont find a letter box here. Who uses them nowadays, anyway?”!

The realization made me a tad bit sad. In an age where ‘e-mails’ and ‘going green’ are the catchwords, the practice of writing letters, dropping them in the mailbox, getting them delivered, is dwindling, isn’t it?

I remember how every house used to have a designated letter-box, some shaped like a house with a triangle-roof, some a more simply shaped square, some built in to the wall, marked with the house number, fixed at the entrance so the postman could easily drop the day’s mailers in the right boxes.

Some houses still do have mailboxes. My parents’ house has one. And I still remember while deciding the layout of the home years ago, a mailbox-design was an essential point of discussion along with other necessary components for them :).

But today the mailbox does not enjoy such a feature anymore, does it?The eagerness to check the mailbox every now and then in the hope of finding a letter or two has waned considerably. Now all the mailbox at my parents’ receives are those umpteen flyers of eateries, coaching centers, PG accommodations and such that go unnoticed and unwanted.

Gone are the days of heading to the nearest post office to pick up a bunch of inland letters and stamps, writing letters and sealing them with stamps, walking in search of a post-box and feeling elated at spotting that red cylindrical box standing tall and calling out to you, bending down to check the section on the box where time is written with a chalk- the time when the postman would come next to clear the letter-box and then getting further excited upon realizing that the letters would be cleared the very same day! And walking back home calculating the number of days the letter would take to reach your loved one! “Will it be 3days? Or maybe 2 since it got cleared the same day of you posting it?”

Gone are the days when you used to sport a smug look for an entire day upon spotting white envelopes sealed with international stamps lying in your letter-box for it meant that the letter had been delivered to your house from across the seas. Oh the value those envelopes had in those days!

Gone is the practice of playing the thrilling game of spotting a red mailer-van or the red letter-box and immediately crossing your fingers while saying a wish in mind, and then waiting in anticipation for the next red letter box few miles down the way so you can uncross your fingers and be assured your wish shall be granted! 🙂

So coming back to today’s prompt, its 3 in the afternoon and I still have no picture of a mailbox to share. And here theres no such concept anyway. There are postboxes assigned to each address which are kept centralized in some faraway place! And you are supposed to go to the place and collect your mails.

And in this heat noway am I going to go to that place to click a picture! I’m already in the weekend mode people, so lazy too!

I have tried digging into my photo archives in the hope of finding a picture of my parents’ mailbox, but no luck!

I have even looked inside Namnam’s toy trunk for a mini letter box, no luck there either.

Aha! Just now Namnam has offered to make a letter box for me. See now what would I do without a teammate like her!

So let me go and assist my Miss Maker

Will be back.. 🙂

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