It is the evening of 6th day of July of 2023. As I relax in my bedroom, my daughter comes to me with something in her hand and asks me to close my eyes announcing that there is a surprise for me. I follow her command diligently (fathers have no other choice). She asks me to open my eyes and hands me a picture post card. "Surprise it is"... I shout in excitement, as nostalgia grips me. It is a picture post card written and posted by my good old college friend Abhijeet from the World's Highest Post Office At Hikkim, Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, India. Though it took a good 26 days (letter was posted on 10th June 2023) for the letter to reach from Hikkim, a serene hamlet situated at the height of 14500 feet above sea level in a district bordering Tibet, to Pune, I must say that his idea of sending it via post itself deserves an applause.
Postal service, I recollect, was the only means of communication when I was a child. We used to eagerly await the receiving of letters from friends and relatives. At the sight of a postman in our locality, we used to run to him and ask if he has any letter for us. Writing and posting a letter in the nearby red-coloured post box was a ritual. There would be simple open post cards, inland letters (which would be closed and no one would be able to see the content), envelopes and aerogrammes (for foreign countries).
I remember, once my uncle who visited us at Dombivli forgot his pair of glasses. On reaching Pune he wrote a letter to my father informing that one of his friends was travelling from Hyderabad to Pune by a particular train on a particular date and that the train would reach Kalyan in the afternoon at 4.00. My uncle described in the letter how his friend looks like and asked my father to recognise him and handover the glasses to him. My father went to Kalyan, saw the reservation chart, ensured that the person was travelling in a particular bogie and handed him the glasses. All this will sound like a fascinating story to today's generation. Though the life was slow, it was not less exciting than the present day. However, it was less complicated for sure.
The invention of electronic communication like mobiles, emails, WhatsApp, Facebook etc. has made the postal communication, kind of, outdated and old fashioned. You can send a message in any corner of the world within seconds. The communication has become fast but people these days are much worried about privacy issues despite there being programs for protecting it. This did not bother people of my generation and before. Unfortunately, the days of the old means like land lines, postal services are almost numbered. The telegram service has already been discontinued, since it has lost its significance. The red coloured post boxes have disappeared. Postal service is now waiting for its turn to go in oblivion. That would be a sad day indeed. But then, that is the way it has been for ages... the old should make way for new.
Anyways... Right now, I am happy to receive a letter through a postal service, probably the first after a gap of at least 25 years. I must salute my friend to have come up with this unique idea and taking me down memory lane as I subconsciously start humming the famous song DAAKIYAA DAAK LAAYAA sung by Kishore Kumar for Rajesh Khanna.
- Nishad Umranikar
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