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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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International Postcard Swap for Families 2011



When was the last time you sent a postcard? Come to think of it, when was the last time you used the Postal Service? With the world becoming a much smaller place with the advent of the internet, even the phone is now getting redundant. Most of my friends these days are those I have met over the net and communicated with via one of the social networking sites.
Coming back to postcards, Samhith hardly even knows what a postcard is! Yes, he has seen them... considering that I buy picture postcards wherever I go, but beyond that, he doesn't really understand that we used to actually use them to communicate with our family and friends. Last month, their school took them to a post office, bought inland letters, made the kids write a letter to their moms, and posted it. He came home thrilled, wanting to see his letter at home. When I explained to him that it would take at least a couple of days to reach, he was surprised. Every single day after that, when he returned home, he asked for it, and when even after 4 days, the postcard didn’t arrive, he thought I had hidden it away! Thankfully, the letter arrived on the fifth day, and he was there to open it himself. I have rarely seen him so thrilled about something as simple as opening a letter. He brought out an old letter opener I thought I had hidden away from him, and ceremoniously opened it and read it before allowing me to read it too! I promised myself that I would make him send letters to others too, and cajole my cousins to sending him letters and cards too by the post, but that has yet to happen...

Meanwhile, I am participating in the International Postcard Swap for families 2011, conducted by Playing by the Book. They had a similar swap last year, which I missed narrowly. I have been eagerly looking forward to this year’s swap.

Playing by the book is a website dedicated to books, and that too kids books, which is what makes it really interesting for me. Over the last year that I have been reading their blog, I have become familiar with many of their regular readers and contributors, and this is a wonderful way to get in touch with them in a more personal manner.  For more details, check out their site or click on the link below…


Interesting, isn’t it? And it’s easy to sign up. All you need to do is to read the FAQs posted in the link above, and then send an email to Zoe. She will get back to you with the form where you have to give her your details, which will help her match you up with the other families. So those of you who read this, especially those with kids, go ahead and sign up and introduce your kids to the pleasure of sending and receiving postcards from across the world!

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