By: Ganesh Saili
Postage stamps, Letter Boxes, old Post Offices… anything connected with the mail tells a story of its own. These tales range from politics, history, technology, biography, genealogy, economics, geography, disaster and triumph. Though each story of the Post Office begins with nostalgia, it brings to us the human side of the thousands of people who have lived and worked within the system.
Our tradition of mail running goes back to the 15th century when the Mughals ruled most of India. Down the ages, the job of a mail runner has always been a risky one, and the hirkara, as he was called, had to protect life and limb with staff, spear and bell. At the hour of cow dust, these khaki-clad runners, assisted by torchbearers, went through dales and valleys, hills and forests, often accompanied by dug-dugiwallahs to chase away wild animals. Often, the countryside was so infested with predators that the roads were almost impassable. An old journal entry has it: ‘Day after day, for nearly a fortnight, some of the dak people were carried off at one or the other passes.’
Nowadays, we take the postman for granted. It’s a courier’s world; they zoom from house to house on two-wheelers making deliveries, grabbing all attention. Meanwhile, without fuss or fanfare, our men of letters continue to deliver mail to ninety per cent of the countryside, just as they did over a hundred years ago when their task was fraught with risk.
Record books have it that in the early days, opening a Post Office didn’t involve a mammoth outlay of funds. In a hill station like Mussoorie for instance, it could all be managed by a single postmaster and a couple of assistants!
An old Colonel got a new orderly, whom he instructed to drop the mail ‘into the hole in the red box’ at the Post Office. Six weeks passed and urgent official letters remained unanswered; the colonel grew anxious. He dragged the servant by the ear (I believe you could do that in those days!) down to the Post Office, determined to get to the bottom of things.
Next to the office was the Post Master’s drawing room, neat, and clean, with a fireplace that in the summer months was three-quarter draped with a velvety red curtain. Of course, the letters had been posted there, and there they lay – all seventeen of them – behind ‘the hole in the red box’!
‘Letters will work like charms or talismans for the invalids of the Convalescent Depot,’ wrote Capt. Young, as he cajoled the Directors of the East India Company into setting up a post office in Landour. The year? It was 1827.
After Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne, the Post Office Act XVII came into force and Landour’s first post office began operating from the Chowk. From 1850 to 1862, the shikari and naturalist Jim Corbett’s father, Christopher William Corbett, was the postmaster. Later in 1909, the General Post Office shifted to Rolleston House off the Mall, while the one in Landour was turned into a Sub Post Office.
Though none of the buildings housing these post offices were dilapidated or falling apart, the old rentals were low. Life grew around the sub-post offices in Landour, Library, Charleville, Barlowganj and Jharipani. Initially, the mail totalled less than a hundred articles a week, which by June 1935 peaked at 1,31,562 articles, all wonderfully managed by one postmaster and his two able assistants.
Post offices are reinventing themselves to keep up with the times. That’s the only way they will be able to withstand the new challenges thrown up by courier companies, mobiles, SMS, Whatsapp, and e-mail.
I remember the day when the postman, having spent the good part of an afternoon fruitlessly searching, knocked on our door to ask if we knew a ‘Mrs. Aili. ‘
‘Never heard of her,’ I chirped glibly, unconcerned, as he trundled off to resume his search. Then suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks: Mrs Aili was Mr Saili. A misplaced full stop had the power to change my gender!
And before it did, I chased after him.
Ganesh Saili, born and homegrown in the hills, is among the select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. The author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.
