ststephens.edu Letter Writing Competition 2015 Delhi : St. Stephen’s College

Organization : St. Stephen’s College
Competition Name : Letter Writing Competition 2015
Applicable For : All Junior Members (including the outgoing batch)
College Location : Delhi
Competition Last Date : 31 July 2015

Website : http://www.ststephens.edu/Letter_Comp.htm

Letter Writing Competition 2015:
All Junior Members, (including the outgoing batch)
St. Stephen’s College,
Delhi 110007

Dear Junior Member of the College,
There is a document that I keep like a treasure. It is a hand-written letter from Rev. W. S. Rajpal, the 9th Principal of our College. It goes back to 1982, when I was in Bishop’s College, Calcutta (in those days) learning theology. He used to write a letter per month to me, without fail.

I compare that letter, instinct with the characteristic sweep and flourish of Rev. Rajpal’s hand, with the tens and thousands of SMS-es sent, like cyber fumes, to sundry hands. It is riddled with every imaginable imprint of impatience. “Great,” for instance becomes “gr8” and “before” becomes “b4” and so on. Grammar is administered an open-handed slap on its face. And every word is emotionally dry and desiccated. An SMS is a text imprinted with impertinent impermanence.

This takes an emotional toll on us. We need to express our feelings and sentiments in their richness and fullness and overcome our fear of intimacy with our loved ones in the process of communicating. The very purpose, after all, of communicating with anyone is to make her/him feel that we care and cherish. That cannot be done through a medium of transience like the SMS.

There is a special reason I feel strongly about this. My early timid, tentative steps towards becoming an wordsmith were taken through letter writing. I used to take a lot of time and trouble to give the finest expression to my feelings towards everyone I wrote to. Letter-writing was, for me, a high “art”. It still is.

St. Stephen’s wishes to promote this humane art. To that end I propose a letter writing competition. The scheme is set our below:
You are to write, in your own handwriting, (word processing/typing not allowed) a letter to anyone you feel close to, on something that you feel strongly about. It can be, say, your mother, your father, a sibling, a friend, a relative. Remember that the stronger you feel towards the person addressed, the richer your text will be. The word limit of the text is 400 to 500. The last date submitting the entries is 31 July 2015.

The handwritten letters can be either mailed to The Principal, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi 110007 (clearly indicating at the top of the envelope “Letter Writing Competition Entry” or LWC Entry for short)or submitted in person to Ms. Vasantha in the office when you return for the new session.

Three best entries will be selected by a panel appointed for the purpose. The first, second and third selected entries will carry cash prizes of Rs. 2000, Rs. 1500 and Rs. 1000 respectively. Additionally, 7 (five) best of the remaining letters will awarded commendation prizes of Rs. 500 each. (10 prizes in all).

The entries will be evaluated on the following counts:
1. Richness of feelings/ emotions

2. Sincerity of expression; or the blend of sentiment and style

3. Legibility in writing ensuring easy readability. (That comes naturally, when you care for the person you are writing to.)

The Outcomes:
1. An anthology of the best letters will be posted on the College website, provided sufficient number of letters of good quality are obtained.

2. The founding a letter writing club.