A Teachers’ Day card, with the words already in it

Four cards, already made

Tap an envelope to open it. Nothing here is sent to anybody — these are samples, and the links below them open the write page with that note in the message box, which is as far as any of it goes. We never ask for the other person’s number: you get a link at the end and you send it yourself.

1. For your teacher · Ivory, formal script

   Tap the envelope

   Happy Teachers' Day. There were forty of us in that class and about six who wanted to be there, and you taught it as though all forty did. I wasn't always in the six. Thank you for coming in and doing it properly anyway, year after year.

   Write this one for your teacher

2. For your tuition teacher · Sage, the default hand

   Tap the envelope

   Happy Teachers' Day. School moved at the speed of the class and you moved at the speed of me, which is the only reason any of it ever clicked. Thank you for the evenings, and for going a long way past what we were actually paying for.

   Write this one for your tuition teacher

3. For your professor · Charcoal, printed hand

   Tap the envelope

   Happy Teachers' Day. You were the first person to treat what I thought about the subject as worth arguing with rather than correcting, and that changed how I read everything afterwards. Thank you for taking a nineteen-year-old seriously.

   Write this one for your professor

4. For your mentor · Marigold, casual hand

   Tap the envelope

   Happy Teachers' Day. You never had a classroom and you've taught me more than most people who did. Thank you for the time you gave me when there was nothing at all in it for you, and for being honest when encouraging would have been easier.

   Write this one for your mentor

The names on these four are made up. The words are the suggestions we wrote, which is exactly what you get in the box — and then you change whatever is only yours.

What you are buying

₹49 is the card itself: up to 400 characters in your own words, the envelope, the wax seal, and the paper unfolding when they open the link on their phone — which is what the four above are doing. You see the finished thing, working, before you pay for it.

₹99 adds a photo, or a voice note of up to a minute in your own voice — one or the other, not both — and lets you seal the card so it will not open before a time you choose, anywhere from fifteen minutes to thirty days ahead, Indian time. Either card stays readable for ninety days, counted from when you send it or from when a sealed one unlocks.

The paper, the envelope colour, the wax and the handwriting are all yours to change while you write — the four above are four of the combinations, not four fixed designs. There is no account to make and nothing recurring. We do not know when a card is opened, and we do not tell you.