CHENNAI: The smell of glue and ink, the scribbling of pens, the sharp thumping of a rubber stamp, and bleary figures waiting in line — post offices store hopes, feelings and dreams. From here, words travelled kilometers, bank accounts empowered women in remote villages where the network had yet to arrive, and pensioners lined up for dues.
This was a magical place from where you send words to a friend in a faraway land like a fairytale, says Mythili S Bhat, an assistant professor. Her first memories of the post office are of accompanying her mother and lining up in “annoyingly stuffy office, and loitering around.”
Later, choosing between blue inland letters, A4 sheets, and flashy postcards, she stood in line at 11 am once again after realising “how much of myself I could express in letters.” Walking past the trees to the post office in Osmania University, Hyderabad, she says, “There was something so beautiful walking from hostel to post office to mail a friend. There is a warm glowing light in my heart.”
After a letter has been sent, the waiting game begins. Rama R knows this wait all too well. Armed with a pencil and later her favourite Camel ink pen, as a child, she recalls sending letters from Bombay to her athai in Delhi, and the jittery wait for a reply, and the khaki-clad postman.“I remember coming back from school, and peeping out of our window, every time I heard a cycle bell, hoping it was the postman, carrying a huge bunch of letters in his hand and the cloth bag weighing his shoulder down on one side.
As soon as a letter arrived for me, I would read it quickly. And then reread it, at least 3-4 times patiently to consume the contents and connect with the care with which every word was written,” she says.
In 1998, Rama’s last visit to the post office set the ball rolling for her journalism career. “When I wrote my first article for Times of India’s weekly guest article space, I was going through a heartbreak and I wanted some space to vent.
When I came across this, I wrote a piece, went over to the post office, sealed it using the stamp and messy glue, and sent it over to the TOI office. A week later, I found my piece published in that space. That was the turning point for me — when I realised that I want writing to be my career,” says the journalist-turned-narrative strategist.
Filmmaker Naveen Tejaswi, who pens 30-50 letters a year, recalls the doors of his village post office opening up into the scenic view of the lake. “When I drop a letter into the post box, I take two seconds just to enjoy that moment. I don’t know if it is because I want to do it properly or because I don’t want to say goodbye to it,” he says, adding a letter is a long-distance hug to a friend.
Activist Antony Rubin associates his earliest memory of the post office with sending a letter to his school crush in 1998. Over the years, it has transformed into a space of justice and information, as he files Right to Information (RTI) queries, and replies pour in from across the state. “My postman remembers me the most in my neighbourhood.
I file a lot of RTIs and when RTIs started coming in from every part of the state and India, he thought I was an official. Government posts is a safe mode and it reaches places where no courier can reach. My first RTI was with IIT Madras asking them the number of deaths of deers inside their campuses,” he says, adding this reply was used in the first case he filed at the National Green Tribunal, and it started off his journey filing litigations, protecting the environment.
Meanwhile, in Kokkadu village, 54-year-old Sreekalamma D recalls buying stamps for 25 paise, and a blue glue bottle with an ice cream stick. “However, I mostly used boiled rice as an alternative to glue. Sometimes it was saliva,” she giggles.
Madras and mail
From pigeons, horse and foot postal service, and royal receivers to today’s postman, communication has changed, but the love and urgency remain. In the 1700s, the structure of a post office was set up in the sub-continent by the East India Company. In Madras, the General Post Office was set up by Governor Sir Archibald Campbell in 1786. According to the Postal Circle website, “what started as a scheme to convey the mail of the East India Company and its servants in the erstwhile Madras, has now grown into a mammoth system handling over 80 lakhs of mail per day.”
In 1884, the GPO “moved into its own building, the handsome one by Chisholm that it still occupies. The Madras Post Office, as it was generally called, began expanding its services when it opened receiving offices (as opposed to full-service offices that also delivered mail),” writes late historian S Muthiah in Madras Miscellany column. Today, the buzz on Parrys Corner leaks into this building, with the characteristic red bricks and Indo-Saracenic architecture. Another relic from the past is the Indian Philatelic Bureau, which shows Chennai’s love for stamps, envelopes, and all things postal.
“The post office is intimately connected with people’s lives, it brought apartment orders, money orders, love orders, and intimate connections. People preserve those letters. The postal system was omnipresent; you will have a postbox hanging in a remote village,” notes historian S Theodore Baskaran.
The chief postmaster general from 1964 to 1998 says, “It was a people’s department, and easily accessible. It was a staff-intensive department, and because of that, there was an active trade union movement, and we always had management consulting trade unions. One government official who is welcome anywhere at any time is the postman. The postal department was the first to be Indianised, so it was democratic.”
While deputed in North Arcot, he recalls Army officials sending money and salary back home. “The Indian postal system is the largest network and the only system where money is delivered at your doorstep. A few years back, there was no other country where a postcard was cheaper than a phone call. After the pin code was introduced in 1972, it became even more popular.”
Of post boxes and postcards
Postal staff carrying bags of letters and the omnipresent red shiny postbox dots the city, beckoning citizens to pen their thoughts.“I love the consistency of people who deliver posts, I know the way my postal delivery person knocks on the door and it is a sense of reliability, that no matter how many buildings go down or how many people leave, this post person is doing their job,” says Mythili. Naveen’s memories of the postal department are inseparable from the delivery personnel who would cycle 40 km daily to deliver letters.
The love for post boxes pushed architect and founder of Nam Veedu Nam Oor Nam Kadhai, Thirupurasundari Sevvel to document them. “We began documenting them during Covid and Mr Vinayagam from MLS and Prasanna sent photos of it. (This box) surrounds us and it is a box that carries a message,” she says.
Subsequently, Nam Veedu also undertook a postcard initiative. “We think heritage is a visiting card to identify ourselves but heritage is like a postcard that you pass it onto the next generation, or travels. It has your mark but it travels, and it is like a chain process,” she says. T Jaisakthivel of the University of Madras, notes, “The postal circle encourages people to write. Postcards are a 6x4 paper and you have small space and you need to think about what you are writing. It develops a creative sense.” For those who love postal departments or the uninitiated, Thirupurasundari has some advice: “Keep your eyes open, there are so many postal-related events happening in your city. Go to your nearest post office, and buy a stamp or postcard. Go to your nearest philatelic bureau and become a member. Write a letter for yourself.”
STAMP TRIVIA
According to the Indian Philately Digest, a pictorial cancellation (PPC) is a postmark that shows a replica, photo, design, or picture highlighting a tourist, religious, historical, or important place or thing. Tamil Nadu has over thirty permanent pictorial cancellations, including one with Mylapore Temple, Peacock and Punna tree, and the Philatelic Bureau, Anna Road.