BANGALORE: A little girl stands on the pavement with her eyes gleaming with surprise and elation as she sees a mail van with the trademark red, wings in yellow and the words ‘India Post’ engraved on it. She crosses her fingers, closes her eyes and makes a wish. She looks back to see the van fleeting by and goes on with her life forgetting all about the wish in a while but deep inside, longing for it to come true.
As the city looks back on another ‘National Post Day’, City Express looks into the lost art of writing letters replaced by emails and the journey of ‘India Post’ from being ‘Company Dawk’ under the East India Company to having 1,55,333 post offices distributed in every nook and corner of the country. A postmaster at one of the largest post offices in the city, on the condition of anonymity, said that letters would never lose its sheen.
“Yes, the number of people who come in to post letters has definitely decreased over the years. But the service is always improving, trying to better itself when it comes to fighting out competition such as email.” Adding to this is the fact that post is a necessity when it comes to university applications, job applications, telephone bills, bank notices, tenders etc keeps it floating.
The boom of the world wide web was probably very influential in the setting up of the epost system by which Internet facilities were provided in post offices. Payments could be made online. Money order facilities were started.
Postal life insurances gained credibility and so on and so forth. While we still see a man cycling his way with a side bag which carries not only envelopes but loads of expectations with it, the process by which it reaches our hands has gone through a lot of changes. Gone are the days when one waited for days not knowing if the letter reached the concerned person or if it got lost or when the reply would come. The Indian Postal Service has caught the bug of digital technology and ensured that people know the exact status of a letter.
One of the major misconceptions about post lies in the fact that many people think that domestic couriers deliver at a faster pace than the ‘government service’.
But with the exception of a few, the Indian postal service works at the same pace as the other services. The Indian Postal Service also provides insurance schemes. Banking facilities under the service are also provided. From a senior citizens savings scheme to a general savings account to public provident fund account, it caters to everyone.
INDELIBLE IMPRINTS Indian stamps have come a long way. Suma Rao, a philatelist, said, “Every year, the department brings out innovative stamps that are not only a delight to look at but do no have a recurring pattern.”
FACT FILE
The Indian Postal Service issued the fi rst adhesive stamps in the whole of Asia The highest post offi ce in the world is located in Hikkim, Himachal Pradesh.
It is located at a height of 15,500 ft The world’s fi rst offi cial airmail fl ight took place in India across the Ganga from Allahabad to Naini India has the largest number of post offi ces than any other country in the world The service employs more than five lakh people.
Days of the letters of love
‘Each letter is like a photograph from the past....Each is a chapter of our life together...’ It was 1973. Krishna Das or the name of her choice, Chaitali was leafing through a magazine and found a column that encouraged the idea of pen pals. Fascinated by the whole concept of writing long letters to a person unknown, she replied to a person with the same surname as her.
Sneaking out under her parents’ watchful eyes, this 13 year old girl used up all her saved tiffin money to buy envelopes to write those letters. A formal letter with butterflies on them was sent to Badal Das, redirected from his college address, as he was on vacation. From the 126 letters that he received, he chose, for reasons that he doesn’t reveal to anyone until today, to reply to only this one.
It began an exchange of letters through the postal service of India, a rarity almost reaching extinction. Scripting their lives over the next few years, they wrote continuously. Well, a love story is not complete without a few lies. Letters were misused too. She wrote to his college address claiming illness of someone in the family so that they could meet each other. He wrote several lengthy letters to convince her to marry him.
They got married in 1977 after the postman had rung the bell of their houses many, many times. Here is where the catch is. While many people, after marriage, are either bored or not in enough ‘love’ to write, their letters didn’t stop. “It is what probably sustained our marriage. We have lived our entire lives through them. Everyone of those letters lies in my closet safe. They are my solace in times of distress,” says Krishna. The wait for a letter, the anxiousness and the relief that you get upon seeing a letter is immense. It stands there full of potential, every handwritten letter with a story to tell. “This generation probably does not recognise the feeling.
The SMSEes and the emails do not even get close to it,” she says. Sathyalakshmi, a teacher worked in Chennai before transferring to Bangalore.
The months following her move brought along with it several stacked letters from her students who wrote to her to tell her how much she was missed. “The best thing about letters is that they can be kept forever.
They are so innocent, convey such real emotions that one read through them can get me through almost anything.” Most of us in the present generation will be lucky to get a single letter that we can look thorough and be nostalgic about.
Emails do not get close to letters and that is a truth we can’t afford to ignore.
As we make our way through life, a letter by post to a loved one may not be such a bad idea after all
POST MATTERS
* The history of post is as old as the history of writing.
But the fi rst documented use of a courier service for the diffusion of documents, can be credited to 2400 BC Egypt.
Pharaohs used couriers for the dissemination of their orders
* The organised postal system was developed fi rst in ancient Persia.
Message carriers would carry letters on horses and change their horses when arriving at designated posts, for maximum delivery speed
* It was during the Mauryan empire (322-185 BC) that ancient India witnessed mail service.
Chariots called Dagana were used to carry mails
* In Rome, during the time of Augustus Caesar, the mail service was called cursus publicus.
Messengers were given light carriages with fast horses.
There was also another system that delivered letters with the aid of ox carts
* Genghis Khan installed an empire-wide messenger and postal station system named Ortoo within the Mongol Empire.
During the under the watchful eyes of Kublai system also covered China
* Much before the Middle Ages, pigeons were used for delivering letters
* Many religious orders used private mail service.
The most notable system was created by the Knights Templar