Colloquially known as ‘taar’ or wire, telegram services of yore, which provided millions with a fast and reliable means of communication, closed down because of mounting financial losses and facing redundancy in an era of mobile phones and the Internet.
There was a news report on July 14, the day the services closed. Considering how wonderfully it served humanity, it is indeed very disappointing that the ‘taar’ is considered redundant now. One never knows when lightning will strike, one never knows when 350 cms of rain will wash away villages and cities, one never knows when an earthquake or a tsunami will hit.
The reason behind mentioning these natural calamities is simple - communication fails completely. Yet, the ‘taar’ has a chance to function even if other modes of communication are not available.
No communication tower can tower over the natural tower - the mountains. And communication is a big problem in mountainous regions of the country and the world. Yet, perched atop a remote corner one always found an operator handling the ‘taar’ with his ‘tuk, tuk, tudak, tuk,...’ using Morse code to send telegrams.
So completely stopping telegram service is probably not the right thing to do.
One can only hope that some scope for its revival remains, if the need arises.
Professors in journalism colleges often tell students to explore all possible means of communication to send a news report.
Not forgetting that piece of professional advice came in handy while reporting the National Football Championships for Santosh Trophy for the undivided Indian Express group of newspapers in Quilon, now Kollam, in 1988.
Those were days the teleprinter was still in use. Trunk call bookings had made way for STD calls and introduction of fax machines was on the anvil. Portable typewriters were used to type out reports of 800 words or 1,000 words without any spell check facility. Either you knew it or you did not. More the mistakes, the more the chances of the copy being dumped into the dustbin. That was professionalism at its very best.
On a very crucial day during the championships, there was heavy rain and storm, which led to the satellite link crashing. There was total power failure and the teleprinters which worked on STD links could not be used as lines were down. It was a major breakdown and engineers at the camp office for media said they had no idea how long it would take for the link to be restored. They asked journalists to file their reports and leave it with them. Serial numbers were given and copies would be keyed in once the lines were okay.
Matches were held under floodlights with the last match finishing near midnight. With a carbon copy of the report in hand, at around 1 am or so, a casual visit to the Central Telegraph Office (CTO) in Quilon solved the problem.
“What are you doing here at this hour,” queried the man on night duty, probably Sugunan. “Just came to check if I could call office and give the report over the phone,” was the reply. He knew that the lines were down. “If you condense the two pages into one, I could send it as a telegram in parts. I will send a message to Bangalore CTO so that someone from your office can come and collect it from there,” he suggested.
The report was reduced by half and sent in the form of a telegram to Bangalore CTO and from there to the office. The next day, it was only The Indian Express which published a report on this match. No other newspaper was able to get the report. The importance of the telegram, probably the second oldest form of communication after the tamed pigeon service, can be gauged from this unique incident. The ‘taar’ is dead, long live the ‘taar’.