What this letter needs. It is an informal letter, so use the informal layout (your address, the date, a warm salutation, three or four paragraphs, an affectionate close). But informal does not mean vague. The two cues ask for particular things — lessons, stories, helping others in the neighbourhood, and then what you will do because of them. Name real incidents, not qualities.
A plan that works
- Opening: say why you are writing now — and, following Dr. Kurien, say why you chose to write rather than call.
- Paragraph 2: two or three specific lessons, each attached to a memory.
- Paragraph 3: one thing they did for the neighbourhood, and what it taught you about people outside the family.
- Paragraph 4: what you now do differently, and what you intend to do.
- Close: a warm ending — With love and respect, Yours affectionately.
32, Vidyanagar Colony
Nashik, Maharashtra – 422005
18 August 20XX
Dear Aaji and Ajoba,
I could have telephoned, but our class read a letter this week by Dr. Verghese Kurien to his grandson, and he says a letter “becomes a possession that can be treasured and re-read over the years”. I want you to have something you can keep, so I am writing instead.
Thank you for three lessons I did not know I was being taught. Ajoba, you never once let me hand a shopkeeper a torn note that you would not have accepted yourself — that is where I learnt what honesty is in practice and not in a moral science lesson. Aaji, you told me the story of your father walking eleven kilometres to school, and you never added a lecture at the end of it; you let me work it out. And both of you taught me to finish what I begin, because I have never once seen either of you leave a job half done.
I also remember the summer the water tanker stopped coming to our lane. You were the only ones who kept a filled pot outside the gate for the people who came to work in the colony. Nobody thanked you and nobody was watching. That taught me something the school assembly could not — that helping people is not a performance.
Because of you, I have started doing two things. I read the newspaper aloud to Mrs. Deshmukh next door on Sundays, since her eyes trouble her now. And I have joined the school's cleanliness group, which meets on Saturdays. They are small things, but you have shown me that small things done regularly are what actually hold a neighbourhood together.
Please write back, even if it is only two lines. I have kept your last letter in my geography atlas.
With all my love and respect,
Yours affectionately,
Ishaan