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
