My brother and I grew up having pen pals. It started with a cousin of ours introducing us to the concept of writing to various embassies and getting brochures and reading material about their countries. Those were the days of no computer/Internet, no phone at home and no TV. We asked the embassy of Ethiopia and Netherlands (chosen simply based on colorful pictures on the brochures) if we can interact with anyone from their country and we had our first pen pals. My brother lost interest pretty fast but I kept in touch for a while exchanging post cards and answering questions about each other's lands. It was quite an interesting experience and I wanted to recreate it for Raunak. Especially because he has never seen a post man in flesh and I could not figure out where the post box was in our colony (I later realized that there is none!). Snail mail is dying and I wanted Raunak to have a glimpse of what it is.
So Raunak now has pen pals. Vinith and Rohit, children of a close friend of mine in Dubai and we are trying our best to teach our boys to take up a pen and write letters to each other. Of course making videos and sending emails has slowly crept in but our focus is on making the boys write. Vinith is 5, Raunak is 6 and Rohit is 7 so it is perfect! We'll see where this friendship takes these kids and if they can be friends at all just through their letters.