Dear Mister Postman

While Diwali brings in happiness and boxes full of sweets and dry fruits, it also is the time when two people diligently knock at your doors- the postman who brings you normal dak and the other who brings you Speed Post. In the world of email, Instagram and Whatsapp, when the art of using the pen is almost on the verge of extinction, these two folks truly are relics of the past. Recently I did catch my office mail room people off-guard when I wrote new year cards and put them in envelopes to be sent to a few people I work closely with. The person asked me,” Sir, iss mein kya hai?” When I said, “Greeting Cards,” the person had his eyes popping out and was completely shocked. Surely he must have had a good laugh with his smart department colleagues, “Yeh Uncle poora mental hai!” as they got on by forwarding posts on their smart phones.

The Postcard

My maternal uncle in Kolkata was suffering from the Emperor of Maladies. A fighter, he was, but it was possibly late 70s when it got detected and slowly his fight was giving way. I was a favourite of his and so Mom would ask me to write to him once in a while. He would be overjoyed getting my postcards, telling him about my school and checking on his health and family.  My mother, like most women, could be very nagging at times. So she kept on telling me to write to her brother since I had not done it for quite a few months. While I kept protesting and finding reasons for not picking up the pen, she lost her cool and put a blank postcard in my hand and made a face, which today tells me, was where Nike got its tag line-Just Do It! And I did. But all I wrote on the postcard was the address in front and on the reverse…

Dear Bara Mama,

HELLO

GOODBYE.

Love,

Shibu

In no time my mother got a reply from her brother and in it was written how pained he was to have got my postcard. I could see the tears in her eyes and realized my mistake. Without saying a word I decided to send an apology letter to the man. But before I was able to get the postcard from the post office, there came a telegram from Kolkata.

Never got a chance to write my sorry postcard. Sorry to this day am I.

RIP Postcard

The Telegram

A telegram arrived at my office at Kolkata on a day when I was missing from action with a bout of flu, resting at my in-laws place. A telegram in our times was the bearer of sad news in most cases and in a few cases, congratulatory. The concerned people at office quickly opened up the telegram and in it was typed and pasted,

BABA EXPIRED

BUDDHA

Fortunately, my wife was in the same office and they took the piece of sad news to her. She quickly identified the sender Buddha who was my closest pal at Delhi. Soon the whole office at 3, Middleton Street, Kolkata knew I had lost my father but before the news was conveyed to the sick son, there seemed some confusion. Is it S’s Baba or Buddha’s Baba who was no more? As luck would have it in the year 1990, neither did Buddha have a phone number to contact nor did my people at Delhi.

STD call was made to the Delhi Office of National Insurance, if they could send someone to my Chittaranjan Park residence to get a confirmation of which Baba. Jagadish Das or Jaga Da, as we fondly called him, had his sister living in the same colony. He contacted her and asked her to reach out to my house. While all this investigative work was going on, D in a sullen mood, left for home to break the sad news to me. Jaga Da’s sister immediately reached my house and saw an old man sitting on a chair in the winter sun and enjoying an orange. She started talking to the old man in general terms and soon realized the mix up Buddha had done to save on the cost of telegram, where every alphabet was charged for. Had my friend added MY before BABA, the whole of National Insurance Head Office employees would have got an extra day to work instead going on a wild goose chase.

My boss gave me a call and told me about the ruckus and confusion that had happened that day. D returned home late in the evening in a heartbroken state and didn’t know how to break the news to me. The mood immediately changed when I told her that I was aware of Buddha’s telegram and all was well at home. Today, there are no midnight wake up calls from the postman but the smart phone on the bedside table keeps us awake and even before you get the news, the world comes to know and the box is full of Heartfelt Condolences…many of them simply forwarded. Tragedy of another kind.

RIP Telegram

The Inland Letter

One fine day I got a call on the office intercom from the Head of Facilities Department at Kolkata, Mr. Subir Sen. He asked me to come down to his chamber. I was wondering why on earth would this man call me. I hadn’t asked for a new chair or complained about having a separate Officers’ Washroom in an independent and equality ridden country of ours. With many a question in my mind, I knocked and walked into his chamber. He was a fair man and today looked somewhat reddish….what had he done to turn red, sitting in a comfortable air conditioned room?  He held an open inland letter in his hand and said, “S, I think this letter is for you. Your mother has written to you. I opened it and read it, thinking it was mine as the inland was addressed to S. Sen.” I took the letter from him and walked back to my work station.

My mother would write inland letters to me. When she was in a good mood, she would write to my residential address and write in Bengali. Then she would write to me in English and post it to my office address, whenever she was upset and angry at Baba and many a times at me. So I knew what the letter contained and what Mr. Subir Sen would have read. As I took a look at the letter, I realized what she had done…she had written her fury letter this time in Bengali… something which Subir Sen could read, but I couldn’t. So I took it home and asked my wife to read it for me….more embarrassment followed…as she read out para after para about how after marriage I had changed, how I would write so often to her and now I address all my letters to Baba. In short, I didn’t love her. It went on to say how sick she was and she would die soon. Someone in the neighbourhood would do the last rites since I was not getting my posting back home at Delhi. Of course she didn’t forget to write one last paragraph on how my father was troubling her and it was impossible to live with him anymore.

Subir Sen, that day onwards, would give me a sly smile whenever he met me in the corridors. The inland letter had gone outland and exposed my story. Subir Sen, I could avoid, but there was no escape at home…kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi…That was my mother and her inland.

RIP Inland

Last word: While D still gives the Diwali bakshish to the postmen without fail, I find myself going to the philately division of GPO at Delhi to collect stamps and First Day covers. We, too, seem to have become relics from the past in times of ‘You’ve Got Mail!’

SS