Requiem for the telegram
Time was when the telegram was the harbinger of tidings good and bad—usually bad such as ‘Mother seriously ill. Leave immediately’ or to the errant young son with a bit of subterfuge thrown in: ‘Return home urgent. Mother serious. All forgiven’. But there were also messages of glad tidings such as the birth of a baby or on the imminent arrival of a loved one from distant shores after a long interval. Time was when a landline telephone routinely required an under the table payment to speed up delivery or for an ‘out of turn’ allotment. It was so hard to acquire that, especially in far flung rural areas of the country, the telegram was the speediest and most reliable form of communication. More famously, it was the telegram from an Australian journalist to his editor during the acrimonious ‘Bodyline’ Test series in in 1932-33 against bitter rivals that gave birth to the term ‘Bodyline’ bowling. Apparently short of change to pay for two words ‘body’ and ‘line’, he conjoined the two into one in his telegraphic dispatch. Thus ‘bodyline’ became part of the English lexicon.
But telegraphic messages have always been cryptic dots and dashes, saving on money, and transmitting missives which usually rang alarm bells as the postman, knocking on doors at odd hours to deliver them, would invariably linger around to eavesdrop on the news, good or bad. Along with the late night nerve jangling ‘lightning’ trunk calls, now also part of history, the telegram too fell silent for good on July 14 when people round the country, in a fit of nostalgia, dashed off their last such messages.
The younger generation, some of whom have never even heard of this lifeline, will of course view it as a quaint anachronism, an obsolescence deservedly consigned to the dustbin of history. Born and bred in the internet age of instant SMS and email, they will never quite understand the centrifugal force of this means of communications and the diligence of the postmaster and postmen across the country in receiving and delivering these messages even in the oddest of hours. But all things must pass, much like the typewriter, the teleprinter, the greasy galleys of newspapers, the twin propeller Dakota and the old, trusty steam engine.
The telegraph service in India tat-tapped into the airwaves 168 years ago when, in 1851, the East India Company established a 48-km line from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour for official business. Realization soon dawned on its efficacy and vital importance. It took just another four years for the service to be extended across the subcontinent, and given its reliability and efficiency, it came to stay on not just for personal messages but as an essential instrument of communication during times of war, famine and other natural disasters.
168 years is a long time for the survival of any form of technology. Within a span of just a few years, the iPad and the iPhone have already threatened to replace the ubiquitous cellphone. Indeed the evolution into mental telepathy may come sooner than anyone could have imagined. But for now it’s time to bid adieu to the telegram, with its crooked capitals, smudged postmark, and that ominous knock on the door at an unearthly hour.
