G. Prakashraj, an engineering student, said that he sent and received over 1,000 postcards from 186 countries across the world in the last four years. Among them are the ones from St Lucia, Czech Republic and Argentina.
He was among the group which participated in a ‘Postcrossing’ meet between Chennai and Ningbo in China at the Writers Cafe on Sunday.
“Postcrossing involves sending and receiving postcards from people across the world. This is facilitated by an online community which will help people get started,” said Anup Goyal, a member of the South India Philatelists Association.
The Postcrossing website explains that people who want to start exchanging postcards need to request an address from the website and mail a postcard to the address they are given. “Once they receive a postcard, they need to register it in the online portal and this means that your address will be given to the next person who requests for an address with the portal,” explained K.K. Swaminathan, who has been involved in Postcrossing for the last few years.
At the meeting on Sunday, around 20 members from the Postcrossing community in Chennai got a chance to interact with a similar group from Ningbo in China. While Postcrossing is slowly picking up in India, the country stands 17th in the list of places with the highest number of postcrossers where Russia is in first place with over 80,000 members who have sent more than 48 lakh postcards.
“I have received postcards from so many countries that I haven’t even heard of before and it is exciting to read up and learn about the place. Taking this forward, I wrote to the postal authorities of Tristan da Cunha, a small island near Africa, with only 300 odd inhabitants and managed to procure a postcard from there as well,” Mr. Swaminathan said.
The members of the Postcrossing community in Chennai said that they were hoping for more youngsters to join them and indulge in it as a hobby. Apart from registering on the Postcrossing website, a few members have also begun to find Postcrossing enthusiasts on online forums and social networking sites and have started writing to each other.
“Like philately, Postcrossing is something needs a lot of patience. With instant messaging services thriving, not many are interested in writing but we have now begun to see better patronage. We’re hoping to create more awareness online and encourage more people to start sending postcards,” Mr Anup said.
