By Shoaib Hashmi

Time was if you got a letter, it may not always have been an unmixed blessing and a pleasure, but it was never a total pain in the butt. Letters came in this cute little envelope with the King’s head embossed on one corner which served as the stamp; and the flap was glued down firm and solid, but there was no glue at the corners, so that there were little openings, and you stuck a letter-opener, or a pencil or your pinky in one opening and slit the bag open nice and easy. Then you turned the envelope upside down and the letter sheet fell out and that was it.

The occasional Eid Card was even better, because the envelope wasn’t glued shut at all. The flap was simply tucked in, the legend ‘Book Post’ was written above the address and it was easy to get at, and saved half the postage too.

Well times have changed, and it is no longer so easy. Now when an Eid card comes the envelope is glued shut every millimetre like it contained poison. The whole thing is glued shut so tight that there isn’t a chink anywhere where you could stick a pin in and start opening. So you feel around to see where the card ends, so you can slice one edge of the envelope off to get at it. And you can’t, because the envelope is actually a millimetre smaller than the card each way, and has been shoved into it edge to edge, and you can’t slice the envelope open without cutting the bloody card in half too!

The odd thing is that each time I go to a stationary shop, I bring back this wad of spanking new envelopes, all creamy and tied together with a ribbon. Then I put a letter in one, and slide my tongue across the flap edge to close it, and I can’t because there is never any glue there. Or there is a substance which tastes and smells like glue but does not actually stick things together. It just curls the edge. Also the edge is so sharp that it slices through my tongue making a two-inch gash, and for days after I cannot talk without spattering my listener with blood, but the blood does hold the envelope together in a way.

And yet all the people who write to me somewhere find envelopes which are really whacking big hunks of glue with a sleeve floating in it somewhere into which they seal the letter. Even if I manage to prize open the envelope, I can’t get the letter because it is stuck to the inside of the envelope. The only thing is to crawl in and tear the letter out. I have half a dozen letters which require answering, but I can’t because the name of the sender is still stuck inside the envelope where I can’t read it, and don’t know who to answer.

If you are the type who gets packets and parcels, you are in really big trouble. A packet used to be a wad of things wrapped in brown paper, with brown cotton string called ‘sootar’ criss-crossed over it and tied in a bowknot. You pulled one end and the string unravelled, then you tugged at the brown paper and it came away in shreds and there was the packet. Nowadays the material of choice for wrapping is plastic sheet.

The thing about plastic sheet is that they have invented a dozen ways for sealing a packet in it -- you can heat-seal it, sew it, staple it, whatever -- and no one has invented a way to open it up. Every time I get a packet from America sealed in one of those FedEx plastic envelopes, I break six fingernails and chip two molars before I e-mail the sender to call and tell me what he wants and throw away the packet unopened.

It gets worse with larger packets because there is vinyl sticky tape which is very thin and looks flimsy so there is the temptation to go round and round the packet a dozen times before you are satisfied it won’t come apart. Trouble is if you want to open the pack you have to unravel all dozen rounds because the bloody flimsy looking tape does not tear or snap if you have Magdeburg’s six horses pulling on each side. The proper, and only way to open it is to dig one end up, then unravel the tape one loop at a time and keep wadding it up. The nasty part is as you wad it up the sticky side is on the outside sticking to your fingers and toes, and for days after you are peeling bits of tape off your knuckles and digging bits out from under your fingernails -- let me post this one to you . That’ll learn you!