There is something to be said about the joy of receiving a letter when you are at your lowest. But if there’s nobody to write you letters, would you resort to having a stranger write the letter for you?
Yes, Adishi Gupta of Mental Health Talks India, has found. In the one month that the 24-year-old has started Letters of Kindness (@writingforkindness), she has sent out 33 hand-written letters as well as emails, to people all over the country. “People tell me what they want me to write about: it could be about loneliness, heartbreak, death and grief, being kind to oneself and so on,” she says.
She writes on a yellow sheet of paper, with flowers on them — her signature aesthetic. A letter costs ₹ 150, but she also offers it free for those who can’t afford it. “You can either have me send the letter to someone else on your behalf, or get a letter for yourself. Most of them choose to send a letter to themselves,” she says, adding that it goes to show how much the world is in need of kindness. Not knowing the specifics of each person’s issue, she writes from her own experiences in the matter, to tell them that they aren’t alone in this.
Having been on various social media platforms for a long time, she has realised how mean a person can be, when behind a screen. But at the same time, she also found many strangers who chose to be kind to her instead. “I started doing this because I know how easy it is to forget that there is kindness and love in the world, which we overlook because we are too bogged down about our immediate life,” she explains.
