From our community library in Cacra yesterday, the 5th of April…
Abhay who came right before the story, was adamant on going to the beach so I sort of changed the extension idea I had conceptualised at the end of the story. Our story was Dakia the Mailman, a beautifully illustrated book by A. Ramachandran and Chameli. The plan was to write letters ourselves at the end of the story. But, instead of writing letters to ‘people’ whom we wanted to thank, we had a quick discussion about the times when we were saved by certain elements of nature. This also tied in beautifully to the story.
Aparna told us that a tree saved her on a rainy evening by giving her shelter while she was shivering. Binayak told us that once when he almost slipped, he was saved by the branch of a tree which he held onto and stood back up. So we all wrote letters to such elements of nature. Most of the children wrote letters or drew something to/for trees. I wrote a letter to the sea and Stephie wrote one to the creepers.
We all decorated our envelopes and made them all fancy. After all our letters were inside our own colourful envelopes, we went for a walk to the beach during which, we delivered our letters to the ‘element’ that we wrote to thank.
The children were careful post-people and spent quite some time looking for crevices to keep their letters safe and finally when we reached the beach, I put my letter into the sea.
While walking back, Aparna told me that she wanted to thank another tree which is near her house and said that she would write another letter to that tree.
And we must ask ourselves, why we do not do more of such things everyday.