The Postman

Recently I was reading ‘The missing Mail’ by R.K. Narayan, when a sudden realisation occurred to me. Whether the present generation will understand the essence of this piece, how much will they feel connected to the core of the story and are they even aware of the importance of people like Thanappa, a postman? Or the community culture shown in the story?

The pursuit for this answer opened my eyes to the changing, or rather changed, times. Walking through the streets of Borivali, Mumbai, on my way home in the evening, I witnessed a school bus making its halt at my building’s gate. The happy faced children jump off the bus to embrace their mother, holding their hand they were being brought towards the elevator, when Rahul, a five year old toddler, spoke up. “Today I’ll make a record of 50 goals”. Of course it was some game he was talking about. Had it been my case back in my time the only thing ran all over my head while returning was to somehow finish eating and rush to the fields, where I would be spending hours till the sun had almost retired from the zenith.

I still remember the time when my father was posted in a different city of a distant state when I was seven and how I had spent my entire evening in an effort to compose a proper letter addressed to him. It was a delight to me t have written about my marks obtained in tests, runs scored by me in the evening match and about how we missed him while celebrating  mother’s birthday in his absence. It was a worthwhile experience. Had it been in the recent time, a simple text would have done the whole thing, sparing me the effort and happiness of it.

I heard my youngest cousin complaining when his uncle had forgotten to call him on his birthday, and there was a time when I had received birthday greetings two days post my birthday and still how much it delighted me to have a physical proof of their present to me. I never complained for its late arrival, for I was aware about the postal services and its demerits.

Letter writing used to be an art taught in school  when I was in my junior classes and as I grew up while appearing for boards the topic had changed to writing an e-mail. While writing this blogg, my SMART PHONE beeped, ‘yaar notes bhej,’ says the text from my friend. ‘send me the notes buddy’. I immediately took the pictures of my notes and sent him. Life has really become easy with the advent of these technologies and the world can be seen as a single connected unit. I no longer have to wait for the next morning’s newspaper to know about the fire mishap occurring in another part of my country. Thanks to the mobile news apps which are available for free. People have many friends in their virtual world, but what good is a hundreds of them compared to one true friend who is ready to be there at one call.

There are advantages of the advent of modern techniques of communications, they are fast easy and hassle free. But at the end of the day the text alert beep of the phone could never replace the essence and feel of that came upon hearing the bicycle bells of Thanappa.