This week I got a letter in the mailbox. The big deal? It had a postage stamp. Yes, a real postage stamp. I must have seen it after a very, very long time — must be years — otherwise, why did I get so excited, I wonder.

I don’t recall the last time since the global pandemic that I received a mail with a postage stamp stuck on it. To be fair, my memories of pre-pandemic events are slightly fuzzy, as I am realizing these days. It’s either age — my age — or something the virus did to my memories.

Just to iterate, I am talking about my life in India, where much of the documents and paperwork is done on, well, paper. The point about paper is that it has to be sent across to the person concerned. This brings us to the topic of mails — the physical ones, not emails. And postage stamps.

But no, sir. Few, if anyone, in at least urban India, use the postal department, let alone go to the post office and buy postage stamps, any longer. India has the world’s largest postal network. Private “courier” (parcel delivery) service has become so inexpensive, and so omnipresent, in most Indian cities that it’s easier to go to the neighborhood shop and send it by private delivery as against going to the post office and starting the relatively long process to have it delivered.

Heck, most such private firms will even send an agent to collect it from your home or office in India. At zero cost.

At most, some people in urban India use the ‘Speed Post’, the Postal Department’s express delivery service.

Which bring us back to such delivery services’ much poorer cousin, the postage stamps. Sorry, no point wasting time. Not many, at least not in urban India, use them any longer.

Canada, or at least Saskatoon, so far my limit of experiencing things Canadian, thus came as a surprise. Canada Post is used — and used widely. It was a pleasant surprise. Not only by government services but even by private organizations. One of which sent me that much-discussed mail with a postage stamp on it.

It’s so small! That was my first, wondrous reaction. Just a little wider that the tip of my index finger.

My mind went back a million years when dinosaurs used to roam the streets of New Delhi, and I was a young boy. Like most children in those pre-television days in India, when the world wide web was just three words (not to be confused by the web cast by Spiderman, the super-popular Sunday morning animation in India back then, which you could miss only at the risk of being declared alien, or a nerd, which was worse, by your friends) I collected stamps. And, boy, were they interesting! Colorful, shining, gigantic (by today’s size), and finished in style on glossy paper. And on would the envelope go in a bucket of water, for the stamp to come unstuck, and in they would go into a scrapbook, fresh glue stuck on its ample behind.

New ones would come from either parents or family members going on tour — abroad was like hitting the jackpot — and getting some stray envelopes, with the postage stamp stuck duly on them, back for you. Or, exchanging them with other kids, similarly hyperventilating over their collection and ready to palm you off with a Britain stamp with Queen Elizabeth’s headshot mugshot in exchange for your huge and colorful Aruba stamp (yes, I learned there’s a place called Aruba back in those days. I was always under the impression that it was a country, learning much later in life, thanks to the aforementioned World Wide Web, that it is an autonomous part of the Netherlands).

No sir, you keep your Britain stamp — no offence, but they used to be sort of predictable and, well, a bit boring. Certainly not as colourful as those of Aruba’s, or Macau’s. Or so I would reason.

I left that scrapbook of stamps back at home in India when I moved to Canada. So the poor little cute Canada Post stamp stays stuck on our fridge, sharing space with the thousand-and-one magnets for now.

Until we get more mail with stamps at our Saskatoon home and the dinosaur-age child in me wakes up and decides to call for a revolution.

It’s the small things in our life that we cherish the most — and looking at the stamp, it seems the smaller the better!

On that note, do write to me. On paper. Put it in an envelope. And post it. I promise I will not let anyone know that I could not read your indecipherable handwriting.