When I see my grandchildren busy with their mobile phones, texting messages and sending photographs to their friends, I can’t help remembering the days of snail mail that prevailed during my childhood. The postman and the telegraph man had a prominent place in society.
As letters were usually transported in an RMS boggy, an integral part of all express and mail trains, the time they took to reach the destination depended on the distance between the two places. As most of the families in Kerala used to have some members working in other parts of the country and even outside, money used to be sent home every month by money orders. The postman would not leave till he was tipped proportionate to the amount paid. That was also the case with telegrams. Even when the news communicated was tragic as the death of someone, the delivery boy would wait till he was tipped.
I remember an incident that had me at my wit’s end. My wife was to return to my workplace in Gujarat after a month’s stay with her parents in Kerala. The journey took four days and changing of trains at three stations. Writing letters was the usual mode of communication. She had conveyed her travel plans and was to reach Bulsar (now renamed Valsad), the nearest place where the train halted, that morning. It was the usual practice for the relatives to send a telegram, the quickest mode of communication, soon after the journey started.
I reached the station in time but was shocked to find no sign of my wife. I returned to my city posthaste and went to the telegraph office. As suspected, there was a telegram waiting for me, informing me that the journey had been cancelled.
We have come a long way from the days of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta, where a yaksha (a nature spirit), banished by his king to a remote area, asks a cloud to take his message to his wife. Probably he had the company of people who used cave paintings, smoke signals, trained pigeons and the like to convey messages.
Landline telephones with rotary dials were used for local communication, but the waiting period for a private connection was about ten years. There was a provision for ‘trunk calls’ for calls between cities. It took a long time for the parties to be connected. The caller had to shout for the other party to hear. The exchange used to be so loud that it was often said in a lighter vein that the other party could hear even without the telephone.
There were newspapers churning out news coloured by the ideology of the owners. Several political parties also owned newspapers, whose patrons were mainly the party’s sympathisers. Radios were a source of fresh news. Keeping a radio set required a licence issued by the postal department after charging an annual fee. The black-and-white television, whose reception was at best hazy, came later. Its massive antenna, installed on the terrace, had to be adjusted often for clearer reception.
For the new generation, it would be unimaginable to think of a period without cell phones, computers, the Internet and social media.
