Did you get mail?

Did you get mail?

Somewhere into a netbanking session, the black mouse sliding under my right hand perhaps came to life, deciding to upgrade my information on current affairs and I found myself staring at several videos and photos of postal staff strike on the screen. 

They make a total of five lakh i.e. half a million employees in our country and I did not know they had gone on strike. Half a million men and women going off work! Their protest was against corporatisation of India Post or Bharatiya Dak, I read.  

Photo: The Hindu

Every government brings in new policies which it believes would pick up the nation from where it is lying in a slumber and put it on the top of the world in terms of development so they can soak in the accolades and take the bow for this performance. Anyway, talks were held, as is usual in such cases, between the officials and the leaders of the postal workers’ union. As a result, one section of employees deferred the strike but the other went on with its plan and so on the 10^th of this month, they raised their voices against the government intentions and for now, that is all.

But most of us have a soft spot for India Post because for the last 150 years, it has encouraged us to connect with our loved ones staying in other villages, cities and countries.

Come, let me take you to the times India Post was the regina and all of us its obedient as well as doting subjects.

Not more than (perhaps) three decades ago before internet and courier services made an appearance, every day in the forenoon the dakiya or postman- a man (sorry, never seen a mailwoman till a couple of years ago) clad in khaki uniform came carrying a huge bag on his shoulder and several packets in the basket on the handlebar of his bicycle. Some postmen would issue a notification e.g., ring the cycle bell or call out. He took out post cards, inland and overseas letters, and envelopes bearing reports of dull goings-on, surprises or expected results, or parcels too.

Once in a while another postman would bring telegrams, little typed papers, bringing you news of utter joy, warnings or grief within a few hours of the event, perhaps like snail SMS in today’s parlance,  and not to be confused with Telegram - the ‘cloud-based instant messaging service’ today.   

The dakiya came every day and was a part of our parents’ lives. He slid the letters down the slit in the mail box fixed at the gate and wanting to be the first ones to take it to the elders, we would peep and poke to make sure there were no lizards (Yuk, how I hate them!) in the mail box before we took the mail out running inside, announcing loudly.

Photo: The Logical Indian

All registered letters and money orders were handed over personally. Of course, there were complaints that the dakiya would ask for a tip if he brought in the money order for pension (especially in villages where most of the people were illiterate).Sometimes he would read out the letter for someone or take a break from his tiring work and sit at the local chai shop for a bit of gossip.

Every festival whether it was Dussehra, Diwali or Lohri, dakiya uncle shamelessly asked for baksheesh which was like a dignified acknowledgement of his services and not a tip or bribe as the dictionary says.  

Opening somebody else’s letter was a sin so was hiding, stealing or destroying it.

You wrote letters to friends, grandparents or siblings, sometimes using special stationery, in great handwriting, put them in an envelope, wrote the address, stuck stamps of the required value (the recipient had to pay the fine for the unstamped or ‘bairang’ letters), and made sure to put them in the red letter box proudly standing in a corner of the street.

Then you calculated the time it would take to get a reply which involved several steps- clearing of mail by the postman, its journey to the main post office, stamping,  moving to its destination city, sorting of mail, delivery, the reply and the journey back to you with the same number of stops. No wonder you tried to write letters as pithy as possible, for maximum information and impact. And that is how letter writing developed as an art.

Letters to pen pals, mostly residing in other countries, were a different game. You tried to fit in the maximum number of words on an airmail letter. The charge was based on the weight, so your effort was to keep it as light as possible. God help him/her who forgot to write by airmail on the envelope because then the mail would be sent by sea and that meant an uncertain wait for several weeks.

If you wanted to know whether your letter had landed its destination, you sent it by registered post, paid an acknowledge fee in advance and got a signed card by the return mail.

So different from the few sentences which generally comprise email! One click on send and before Santa can drop down your chimney on Christmas Eve, lands the email in the inbox of the recipient.

You had to send your greetings and birthday cards weeks ahead so that they reached around the target date. Little boys would wait impatiently for the envelopes bearing the small pile of gaudy sponge cut outs embellished with gaudy sequin and plastic shapes stitched together, the rakhdi or rakhi.

That is called snail mail now. Every process took its own sweet time. In the time it took a girl’s parents to get a ‘yes’ from the boy’s parents or vice versa, couples these days are already expecting their first child or have broken up and are into their third girl/boyfriend.

And do not forget the stamp collectors, always on the look-out for some rare official paper treasures marking an occasion, in any country to preserve it for posterity.

The first savings bank account I had opened was in the post office just across the road from our house. Believe me, the post office still pays 4% annual interest as opposed to the 2.5 % by the banks. Didn’t most of us buy National Savings Certificates, Kisan Vikas Patra (loosely translated Farmer Development Certificates), or Postal Life Insurance Scheme for ‘tax savings’?  

Courier services and internet changed the whole world as did the expansion of transport systems in the last two decades. Now most gifts including rakhis are ordered online because it is faster and in most cases cheaper and less hassle than retail shopping.

India Post is still a blessing for rural areas where 1,39,067 of the total of 1,54,965 post offices operate. Besides the postal and small scale savings services, they also work as disbursement agents for wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA).

 

Of course, I agree with you that email is free, paperless and does not use fuel for transportation. Moreover, fortunately for Indians, there is a very small percentage of junk mail in our mailboxes every day.

Yet once in a while it seems worth the effort to draft a letter with thought and care, put it in black and white in your best handwriting possible or send a physical card to say I am thinking of them. It might not become a victim of the delete key and be preserved for eternity like Pandit Jawaharlal’s letters to Indira Gandhi.

Or who knows there could be another film made on that real story like Letters to Juliet or The Letters (Mother Teresa’s letters to her friend Father Celeste Van Exen) on a folded piece of paper enclosed in an envelope carrying a small postage stamp in one corner!

                                                                                                    - Anupama S Mani