The handwritten letter festival "Oshomoyer Daak" was organised by KrayonMag, a social story telling platform. This one-of-a-kind event, very pertinent in today's context, was open for all and took place for three days from 19 to 21 October at Bishwo Shahitto Kendro.
The practice of letter writing is on the verge of becoming obsolete as digitisation advances. The days of postmen delivering letters on bicycles with yellow envelopes or the crinkling sound are just memories. In this age of e-mails, faxes, and text messages, no one writes letters to anyone anymore. Handwritten postal letters are going out of practice, which was the main basis for "Oshomoyer Daak" and letter festival from Krayon Mag.
KrayonMag had suggested a few topics for the letters as well, some of which were related to the SDG goals, such as "gender equality." "mental health," "climate change," "education system," and "peace not war."
There was an open letter category. "Your dream," where authors could write letters about their dreams, parents, family members, favourite city, favourite author, or a character in a book. These letters could be addressed to be a loved one, a relative, a faraway friend or a fictional character. Participants were free to write about any beloved object or character from literature or movies.
At the opening ceremony, the chief guest was Aroma Dutta, MP. Among the special guests were Salma Adil, MJF, Founder, Salma Adil Foundation and Bhaskar Chowdhury, poet and author. The 3-day festival concluded on 21 October with panel guests including Azra Mahmood, famous media personality, Manizey Ibrahim, author of upcoming debut novel, “Aries: The Beginning”, and Director of Legal Affairs at Ibrahim Securities Limited, and Ahsan Bhuiyan, Barrister-at-Law and founder of Poribirton Kori Foundation.
KrayonMag founder and CEO Tanziral Dilshad Ditan thanked everyone for their spontaneous participation in the letter festival. She said, "a handwritten letter is such a medium where all of our thoughts and unspoken words can be expressed in a complete way. It can also contain some important statement or opinion. Nevertheless, at this fast paced time of technological advancements, the practice of writing letters has become almost obsolete. From this perspective, Krayon Mag has arranged this hand-written letter festival 'Oshomoyer Dak'. Through this festivity, we wish to bring back the eternal appeal of hand written letters."
The event was sponsored by Daraz. It should be mentioned that everyone had responded enthusiastically to the invitation to participate in Krayon Mag's "Oshommoyer Daak" letter festival via social media since the beginning of October. The letter exhibition of Krayon Mag was being exhibited at this event with these letters sent by everyone. Krayonmag will publish a book with the compilation of these letters at the upcoming 2023 book fair.