Sir, post
Man of letters.
Don't imagine that i am going to write about any great literary giants and scholars who are of no interest or consequence to a common man like us ( or like me). This is about a man who has probably completed his eighth or tenth standard who is also a man of letters of greater standing than the real men of letters.
Those were the days when we used to look forward eagerly to this man of letters, a species becoming more or less extinct. He was a simple, friendly looking, kind man, not only knowing every nook and corner of the village but also the names of individuals. (unlike me, who can remember faces but not the corresponding names and vice versa). He was a "Who's Who " of the village, in fact the local Directory. He was no scholar but a stroller moving from house to house carrying a bundle of letters in his hands and whose presence in the street instantly electrified the area and generated great hopes and enthusiasm among the people there, creating fast heart beats in every one. Even though he was a man of many letters, he was a man of few words, causing great expectations and excitement in the village. He was a great deliverer, a link between the old generation and the new ones who have been separated by the vicissitudes of fortune with children working elsewhere leaving their parents behind in the village, who were not willing to vacate their ancestral huts and houses and to go with their sons or daughters. It was common those days to send their kids, mostly boys, by the elders to the post office in advance to collect the letters addressed to them and since the postman knew every child in the village by name with the family details, he won’t hesitate to give the letters belonging to the family to those kids and this was almost a daily routine in the village. You can’t dream of such a thing any more and it has become a thing of the past. May be in some of the remote villages, this still happens. People in cities and towns meet their postmen either after Deepavali or Pongal when they come to collect bakshees.
To the "just then married couples", the postman was a great ambassador who carried the message of love and cheer to and from the concerned. There were no phones those days, which only a privileged few had and there was no other mode of communication except letters. Then you can understand the role and importance of letters and the man who acted as a bridge between those separated by a distance. You could imagine how the girls expecting letters from their husbands and men expecting letters from their beloved would have reacted those days on seeing their ambassador carrying the message of love ( what in the olden days, the doves and clouds were doing described extensively in Indian literature as புறா விடு தூது, மேக சந்தேசம் and so on). If he delivered a bulky letter in the house to either the lady or the man with a smile in his face, you could be sure, that it was invariably a love letter from the spouse. As soon as he made his presence in the road, he was eagerly questioned by the interested whether he had brought any message for them.
Some would look forward to him with the hope he might be their deliverer bringing hopes and money which they needed so much for their survival. Every house used to resound with the words "Sir, Post" which sound was a music those days, sweeter than the sweetest music of MS. Invariably he was a deliverer, a messenger of hope, a liberator, in short a Santa Claus of our days. The cheer that he brought, the thrill that he caused and the hopes which he raised are something to be experienced to be believed. The cheer the delivery of letters brought was the same as the cheer that a lady brings on delivery of a child. He would also act as the torch bearer of the society by issuing warnings to the concerned, in case he finds something fishy in the correspondences, such as an unmarried girl receiving frequent letters from an unknown man and so on. He would alert the parents of the imminent danger and issue a mild warning to them to take necessary steps to avoid the impending family crisis. The young and the old were equally thrilled by his presence, the like of which has become an anachronism today. At times he not only delivered the letters, but also read it out to the illiterate villagers conveying the content of the letter verbally.
When he came at some odd and unusual hours, he was looked upon with fright and fear, for It may be a telegram from somewhere bearing unbearable news. A telegram irrespective of what it was, was a terrifying affair those days. People used to shudder to open and read its contents, for it was always believed that a telegram carried a grievous death message.
When the post man said "Sir, Registered Post", then also it might cause some consternation and uneasiness, for it may be a notice from a lawyer or a sales tax office. Rarely it might be an appointment order still causing concern until it was opened and read. But these were all very common incidents.
The usual shortest letters that parents ever received were the "once a month" letters written by their sons (daughters staying in hostels and studying in colleges were unknown in those days) asking for money to pay to the hostel, college and for some other incidental expenses. ( I belong to this category of writing one letter every month without fail for the same reason and is it fair for you to expect any father to feel happy about such a letter?).
Nowadays with the emails and with phones in the hands of everybody including the just born, letter writing which was developed as an art in those days had been crucified. Today nobody writes a letter as we did in those days. Our letters used to be short and crisp when writing to father, descriptive and detailed while writing to mother, funny and frolicsome while writing to brothers and sisters, and long, poetic and literary while writing to the spouse.
Letters from family ladies will be more about health enquiries, about what was the culinary preparation for the week, about marriages and proposals mooted, about the passing away of some dear and near relatives, some of whom they have never seen, and about the neighbours and their antics, pictures that they saw that week, about their neighbour's daughter and her affairs and so on. The standard format of family letters would be" we are all OK. Hope it is the same with you. I had a severe headache for the past one week. Athai is suffering from severe cold. Thatha has severe cough disturbing my sleep. Hari has not gone to school for the past two days because of flu, Sandhya is suffering from stomach ache. The cow in the house is not yielding enough milk. Times have become bad. As a whole, we are all OK and i hope you are also OK. Please keep writing whether there is anything to write or not. I have to go to the temple and return home before he comes. Take care."
Now this very personal touch through handwritten letters is lost. Love , affection everything seems to have been mechanised. In fact today up to school level, students use pen and pencil for writing and beyond that, with the advent of computers, handwritten materials are becoming sparse. Since our schools and universities still insist on students answering papers using pen and pencil, handwriting is alive to some extent. With online questions and modernisation, even hand written answer sheets may become a thing of the past. Within the next decade, handwriting may become extinct and anyone, writing with a pen or pencil may be dubbed a great artist.
Today no one has any time to write letters, (leave alone writing with hand) and they use abbreviations and acronyms so much in their mails that the beauty of letter writing as an art is dead and gone. Couriers have come to take up the job of what was essentially that of the post offices, but the courier walas are but a poor substitute for the postman, for they lack that personal touch, which the erstwhile postmen had. For want of patrons, post offices are turning into ghost offices and the Government is doing its utmost to prevent retrenchment by giving odd jobs to those working there.
Today the postmen have almost become an odd and endangered species. Cards, covers and stamps are also becoming rarities along with handwriting and in the next generation, post offices would have become historic monuments. And it will then be for the archeological department to unearth them and their history for their posterity.
