In praise of the post

Isn’t there something quite wonderful about the energy expended by so many to make sure all these cards and letters do in fact get through?
‘The Post’ does of course do far more than deliver the mail.
‘The Post’ does of course do far more than deliver the mail.

A century ago, one of the first airmail services, flying from Cairo to Baghdad, was forced down somewhere in the desert. Fortunately, the three-man crew managed to get off a distress signal and after a scorching day and a freezing cold night, another biplane landed beside theirs to pick up, not them, but the mail they had been carrying.

The unfortunate crew had to wait considerably longer before their rescue was attempted. This prioritisation of the mail over its carriers has been evidenced around the world and across the centuries since postal services were first introduced. So as the world’s postal workers heave a collective sigh of relief at the completion of another mammoth achievement in mail shifting over the festive season, we should all salute these unsung heroes.

Perhaps we should also ask ourselves why it’s so important that, in the motto attributed to the legendary Wild West Pony Express, ‘The Mail Must Get through.’ Some messages of course change the course of history: Pheidippides carrying the news of victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. The fortune the Rothschilds made by being the first to receive word of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

But these are the exceptions. The many, many tonnes of mail shifted this year, as in every other year, mainly comprises good wishes, news of lives (hopefully and thankfully) unchanged and half-hearted promises of catching up over the next 12 months. Amiable, well-meaning, but hardly vital stuff.

The world would surely not shake if they were delayed by a day or even a week or two. Yet isn’t there something quite wonderful about the energy expended by so many to make sure all these cards and letters do in fact get through? It’s also impressive how rigorously so many nations protect the sanctity of their mail service. Just take a look at the penalties in Chapter X of the India Post Office Act of 1898. (I have to say I’d never even considered defacing, let alone defiling, a letter box, but at least I now know what would happen to me if I did.) When faith in institutions is in global decline, it’s hard to think of many other government agencies so affectionately regarded. 

‘The Post’ does of course do far more than deliver the mail. In many countries it supports telecommunications and even provides rudimentary banking services to the poorest in society. Cumbersome bureaucracies though they often are, at their heart is something innately decent and deeply human, celebrating the abiding primacy of individual relationships. In a world full of better resourced private sector rivals, on a planet where billions of us routinely use email, Facebook and WhatsApp, the abiding appeal of the greetings card and the postage stamp is strangely touching. 

Neil McCallum  Twitter: @dawoodmccallum
*Writes as Dawood Ali McCallum
Author of five novels, Mrs A’s Indian Gentlemen*  being the latest

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