Postcards vye for popularity once again with pretty pictures,protest letters and social messages Twenty three-year-old Ruchi Ajmera pins up a picture postcard in her studio apartment in Pune,which she got from a friend in Bhubaneshwar. It shows the two of them at a coffee shop in Orissa. In another setting at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU),the postcard is a tool of protest. Last month,AMU vice-chancellor,PK Abdul Azis,received 550 postcards all from his students,demanding the opening of another centre of the institute in Malegaon,Maharashtra. Meanwhile,Sanjeev Kumar,the director of Zazen Art Centre,Chandigarh,sent postcards to his contacts in the city,asking for updates. As an advisor to various galleries across India,I have realised that though e-mail is a faster way to communicate,its selective since people would only open the e-mail as per their choice. Many times,they find it tedious to read brochures and catalogues over e-mail,while postcards have an effective presence,besides being an affordable way to communicate. Plus,if theres a hand-written message,it looks more personal, he explains the reason behind his choice of postcard. The yellow-tinged postal stationery item is regaining popularity. Gone are the days of Bollywood romanticism,when the hard-working hero in the city would send precious little notes to his beloved in the village. Zoomin,an online gift portal,gets hundreds of orders everyday,where one can customise a postcard to ones requirement and get it sent to friends,and a Facebook postcard application which lets you send an e-postcard is a runaway hit. In 2002,the Indian Post launched Meghdoot postcards,worth 25 paise each. Col. KC Mishra,a senior postal department official based in Pune,says,The move marked the reincarnation of the postcard. Today,its to-the-point communication possibility is being used to go beyond its traditional use. The story became more interesting when in 2010,author and illustrator Vishwajyoti Ghosh launched his book,Times New Roman and Countrymen,a collection of 25 postcards,trying to deconstruct the image of India as popularly defined by Bollywood. One could tear away the postcards and use them. I wanted to create a body of work that would travel more than a book. The postcard is a conventional mode of communication that has stood the test of time. Its definitely funky and offers a visual idiom, says Ghosh. Adding a dose of social awareness to this resurrection story are the NGOs. CRY organised a postcard campaign last month on the occasion of International Literacy Day. Through essays and drawings on these postcards,1,000 children from various government schools across Maharashtra and Gujarat expressed their wishes. These were later displayed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai. Now,the postcard has got a postscript. With inputs from Parul in Chandigarh
