Daakroom-The Letter Writing Carnival: Putting pen to paper

An attempt to reintroduce children to the dying art of letter writing
Daakroom-The Letter Writing Carnival: Putting pen to paper

Can you remember the last time you wrote a letter and posted it in a red letter box near your home? Some millennials might have not even visited a post office.

Given today’s fast-paced digital world, it does appear we have traded handwritten letters for emails.

To revive this lost chapter of our lives, there’s Daakroom – The Letter Writing Carnival, that aims to reach around 30,000 students from over 50 Delhi-NCR schools.

Participating schools include Amity International, KIIT World School, CD International, Army Public School, Mahavir Senior Model School and Balaji Public School among others.

Presented by JK Paper and supported by India Post, the event will witness special competitions, workshops and events, including a quiz on the history of India Post, philately and current affairs, game competitions – designing or modifying a game to accommodate a social cause and an on-the-spot competition, Dhai Akhar (the annual letter-writing competition by India Post).

As a precursor to the event, the organisers – Battees, a 2013 initiative by two NID Ahmedabad graduates, Chandigarh’s Harnehmat Kaur and Allahabad’s Shivani Saran – came up with pre-carnival competitions such as The Letter Writing Competitions: Letter to Army Jawans (Class V to VII), Letter to PM on Plastic Ban (Class VIII to XII), Postcard Design Competition on Save the Environment (for Class V to VII), Poetry Competition on Paper is Life (for Classes V to XII) and Short Video Competition on The Joy of Writing (for Class VIII to XII).

“All these competitions are somewhere related with the concept of writing letters, be it to the PM or Army jawans, postcard designing or poetry competition,” says Kaur.

Shortlisted participants from the pre-carnival competitions will be awarded a golden ticket with special hamper and certificate at the carnival and can attend a free workshop.

In addition, she says, the carnival will feature special panel discussions and curated workshops giving the audiences an in-depth knowledge about the importance of writing and how writing brings out the true innate emotions of a person.

“We have lined up cultural performances and quiz competitions for kids, and food and shopping stalls for parents. So parents don’t get bored when kids are busy with various activities,” says Saran.

Why choose Delhi after Allahabad and Chandigarh? “It is a bigger city with more excited crowds and opportunities. Over the last two years, we built our network in Delhi and realised it was time to introduce this initiative to Delhiites,” shares Kaur.

The carnival aims to bridge the gap between the generation which wrote letters on paper and posted it in letterboxes and the present-day generation which spends most of their time on computers.


“In the last carnival, we actually saw many parents telling their kids how they used to write letters to their relatives and how they should do the same,” recalls Kaur. This edition of the day-long carnival will witness a postman to clear the letters posted by the children from the red letterbox placed at the venue, courtesy India Post.

“Their letters to celebs, PM and Army jawans – addresses of which we shall share – shall reach their destination as they do in actual conditions,” she puts in.

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The New Indian Express
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