When a praying mantis comes in the mail: How Indians are breathing life into letters again

Sefi George’s (right), quarterly mail club sends out illustrated letters centred on wildlife. Each edition features an animal with a personality and a story

There is a particular kind of excitement reserved for seeing your name handwritten on an envelope. It could contain a letter, a tiny illustration, a postcard, a sticker, a poem, or something you have no idea you ordered. For a growing number of people, that little envelope is becoming a monthly appointment with art.

For illustrator Sefi George, who runs Letters from the Wild, the appeal began with something simple: "I love receiving mails. It's such a rare thing these days. And I get very excited when I get one myself."

Her quarterly mail club sends out illustrated letters centred on wildlife. Each edition features an animal with a personality and a story. There is a love-struck praying mantis wondering whether to approach a female mantis, and a Gen Z-style kingfisher waiting to get out of its hole. Alongside the illustrated letter are a sticker, a colouring postcard, and an activity related to the creature, from board games to word searches.

Harneet Kaur (right), another subscriber, says, "I definitely think this is a great way of collecting art and supporting small artists because I think it's patronage that you just pay in installments."

"As an illustrator, since I have the opportunity to make it, why not just give it a go?" George says. Everything is made specifically for the club. "As of now, I've been making everything from scratch for the club," she says, "There is an illustrated letter. It's a narrative from the point of view of the animal and it has illustrations all around that tell a story. There is a sticker, a colouring postcard, and an activity that is linked to the creature."

That little envelope is considerably more labour-intensive than it looks. George says it takes around two days to put together a complete set, with each element printed on separate paper and then cut. There are four or five particularly hectic days every month when she is printing. Yet, she says, the process of researching, writing, and turning information into something accessible to children is what she enjoys most.

And the people on the receiving end aren't simply buying an illustration. They are becoming part of the process.

Artist Megha Saji (right), who runs The Kumo Mail Club from Kerala, began hers after discovering mail clubs online. What attracted her was the idea of sharing a piece of everyday life with a stranger.

For Mumbai-based subscriber Amruta Chad, that exchange is precisely the point. She subscribes to several mail clubs and has turned receiving them into something of an office ritual. When a new envelope arrives, colleagues gather around for the opening. "And then we have a whole show and tell of opening the mail, going through all the artwork," she says.

Chad puts some of the postcards up on a wall at home and at work, changes them around periodically, and sometimes, gives them to friends. "I like to collect different artworks. I don't have a very big house, you know how it is in Mumbai. But I like to keep changing the artwork that I put up."

There is, she says, a difference between buying a postcard and subscribing to the person who made it. Her subscriptions typically cost around Rs 500 to Rs 550 a month. Individual postcards from some of these artists cost around Rs 150 to Rs 300, she says, making the additional amount feel less like a purchase and more like a contribution to the artist's ongoing practice.

Amruta Chad (right), puts some of the postcards up on a wall at home and at work, changes them around periodically, and sometimes gives them to friends

"I would definitely say I'm supporting the artist's practice when I subscribe," Chad says. "I've spoken to some artists, and it's a way for them to experiment without getting too serious about it."

That is perhaps where these tiny envelopes begin to resemble something bigger than stationery. They offer a low-cost version of patronage. Instead of spending thousands on a single artwork, a subscriber commits a smaller amount regularly and, in return, gets to follow an artist's work over time.

Harneet Kaur, another subscriber, describes it even more directly. "I definitely think this is a great way of collecting art and supporting small artists because I think it's patronage that you just pay in installments."

Kaur knows both sides of the equation. A marketing professional who was on a career break, she started her own mail club after noticing the resurgence of snail mail and creator-led postal projects abroad. She ran it for three months before becoming increasingly interested in the wider world of philately and postal culture. She has since subscribed to seven Indian mail clubs - Art Land of Juno, Bangalore; The Antaral Post, Jamshedpur; Post-a-Card, Mumbai; Paper n Prism, Kolkata; May's Snail Mail, Nagercoil; Imaginistaa Snailmail Club, Thiruvananthapuram; Mail Studio Co, Jaipur.

The first time she received all seven, she had just returned from a holiday. "They all came when I was not in town. So, I came and they were just laid under my door, all seven of them."

The sight made her unexpectedly emotional. "We used to see all of this in the movies, that people are getting letters. Because I'm 36 years old, so I definitely haven't seen letters passed around. And it has kind of filled me with so much joy, I can't tell you." She photographed the colourful envelopes and sent the pictures to her parents. "I don't think anything else has given me so much joy as these letters have."

The joy, however, isn't simply nostalgia. There is something about the physicality of the objects that changes how they are valued. "I think you see something on Instagram, even if it's an illustration, I don't think you'll remember it in a minute's time," Kaur says, "But this art I plan to frame and put on my walls so that it's going to stay there for a while."

The experience begins even before the envelope is opened. "Everything is put together really thoughtfully. It exists for a reason, even the packaging, the envelope, the theme, everything is very, very thoughtfully and carefully put together." For artists, the model also offers something that selling individual works online may not: a little predictability. George says that although the club isn't a meaningful source of income yet, the subscription model allows artists to price work more accessibly because they have some assurance that there will be buyers.

Artist Megha Saji, who runs The Kumo Mail Club from Kerala, began hers after discovering mail clubs online. What attracted her was the idea of sharing a piece of everyday life with a stranger.

"That feeling of receiving letters and reading, that feeling that someone is there… I wanted to bring that back," she says. Saji's envelopes contain letters, art prints, bookmarks, postcards and little activities. Her recurring theme is nature, inspired by growing up in Kerala. She is only three months into the club, but already has repeat customers.

Yet she isn't thinking of those subscribers primarily as patrons. "I see them as my friends," she says, explaining how mail clubs also allow people to build a more tangible relationship with an artist.

That might be the most charming thing about these clubs. The transaction is there, but it doesn't feel like the whole point. The subscriber gets something tangible to keep, the artiste gets a small community to create for, and somewhere between the two, a stranger becomes familiar.

Saji says the part she enjoys most is imagining the person receiving her letter. "When I'm putting the mail together, I'm thinking about the other person and what I should write to make them smile."

Even the packing gives her joy, she says, because she imagines how they will open it and feel.

In a time when much of our relationship with art happens through screens, these mail clubs ask for something wonderfully old-fashioned: a little patience.

You subscribe, you wait, you watch the India Post tracking, and then one day an envelope arrives.

Chad even knows which artiste is likely to be sending something based on the location it is travelling from. "I track just to see whether it's the Sleepy Cat Post or Stoberimoo, just to know who is sending it and where my next mail is coming from." And then comes the best part, opening it. "It's like a mystery art that you get every month and it's delivered to your doorstep," she says, "You don't have to go anywhere, you just have to subscribe to it, and it's at the cost of a coffee and a sandwich."

Perhaps that is the new art collector these clubs are creating - someone who doesn't necessarily have gallery walls, a large budget or a vocabulary for contemporary art. Just a small space on the wall, a few hundred rupees to spare, and an appetite for surprise.

Kaur puts it simply: "I don't think there is anybody who is not into collecting art. They might not know that they are doing it."