When the snail knocked

I would say that the invent of mobile phones and not email that put an end to the boom of snail mail.

I still remember the days when we did not even have a landline telephone at home (way back in 1990s) when my grand parents would take me, my brother and cousins to our mama's house in Bangalore (ofcourse by Brindavan Express - he he he). The only way of keeping in touch with amma and appa was sending the famous 'Inland Letter'. Paatti used to consume a lion's share (lioness!?) of the letter leaving two blocks on the backside of the letter for me and Anand to write our stories. A compuslory 'kshemam' at right corner, 'anbulla appa ammavukku aravind aneka dhendan samarpitha vignyapanam' et al would consume two full lines! We had to manage what we did during those 3 or 4 days need to be summarized in a few lines - effective precis writing exercise for us :) Given the fact that Anand had a big size font in his handwriting (probably Arial 14 pt), as the eldest, I have to accommodate that too.

Now-a-days, the number of posts that we receive from the Saidapet Post Office in Jeenis Road can be broadly classified into a very few categories:
1. Newsletters: ICAI for me and ICWAI for Anand, Sri Ranganatha Paduka for Appa
2. Statements: Credit Card statements, mobile bills
3. Kovil memoranda: Receipt for donations, Uthsava pathrikais
4. Notifications and Invitations: Standard yellow/pink invitation cards following the cycle (punyojanam, apthapoorthi, poonal, nichayathartham, kalyanam, poochootal, Seemandham, sahtyapthapoorthi, beemarathasanthi and sathabishekam), white colour cards notifying death ceremonies.

There are zero regular letters of 'nalam, nalamariya avaa' type post 1995. As you can see, anything that can be scanned and sent through email is still being sent as a regular post while regular courtesy call letters have been effectively replaced - by email? Naah, purely due to the mobile revolution.

Thus proved, LHS = RHS :)