Some time ago the entire media sang the dirge of the telegram! As this sentiment weighed heavily with me too, I made a final visit to the Mylapore Telegraph Office on Kutcheri Road and followed it up with a swift round of some of the post offices in Kilpauk, Mount Road, Mandaveli and Mylapore wondering how long the hallowed institution of the post office would be relevant in the context of the recent technological explosion in communication. That the post office plays an important role in society cannot be questioned, however reluctant one may be to sing its praises! Not for nothing did the British create heritage buildings for the GPO in Chennai, Calcutta and Bombay!

Today we notice some desperate attempts at adding a fresh coat of the famous red to post offices, though most still bring back memories of that familiar musty odour, crumbling furniture and blotches of glue that made a mess of the space meant for pasting stamps, writing letters and filling up forms. But INDIA POST, post office savings banking, and Speed-post have added a contemporary twist to the post office.

Regardless of the negative connotations that mark the atmosphere in the post office, there is still the ubiquitous postcard about which much can be said.

Much before the gates of the World Wide Web of the Internet were progressively thrown open to us, before mobile phones turned our art of communication into SMSs, Twitter reduced our eloquence to 140-byte tweets, Facebook restricted our predilections to Like and Unlike, and What’s App introduced a new lexicon into our idiom, the postcard was the star player in establishing contact between relatives, friends, siblings and acquaintances.

Along with the above changes sweeping our lifestyle, the art of letter-writing also seems to be on the wane. In the good old days, it bonded people together – parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances – regardless of where they were stationed or occupied. Those little homilies and personal touches packed into postcards, in fact, portrayed the sign of the times and how people warmed up to each other.

The elder children in a family would usually play the role of an amanuensis taking down dictation from their parents and reading out the contents of the replies to them. The innocent pleasure that they displayed when lending their ears to the contents of the postcards was something to be seen to be believed...

Parents eagerly waiting at the doorstep to greet the all-important postman was yet another occasion to savour. The capped and uniformed postman would puff up in importance as he surveyed the anxious faces and pulled out a sheaf of letters and postcards from his worn-out, weather-beaten bag. It was as if he was pulling out some long-lost bounty from the Heavens! The bell ringing on his cycle was the harbinger of ‘Good News’!

The bespectacled patriarch would clear his throat and after some preliminary discussions on the domestic front and struggle with his rusted spectacles hanging precariously on the bridge of his nose (thanks to a thread wound round his ears), he would get set to write his letter on a yellowed postcard. Every centimetre of the card, including the space on top of the stamp, would be utilised to exercise his calligraphic art! The long treasured Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman or Doric pen with its quaint nib would invariably run out of ink. Unable to open the barrel of the pen, he would shakily open an old Ink-bottle (remember the brand “Quink”?) and gently dip his pen into the bottom and begin his letter-writing exercise. He would wake up early in the morning and write letters on postcards to all his near and dear ones and update them on recent family happenings. Whenever he missed the last postal clearance of the day, one of the youngsters would be assigned the task of catching up with the Mobile Post Office Van in Mylapore, Mount Road or Central Station as it made its way to unburden its contents into the last Mail Train leaving Madras.

Another quaint custom of those days involved the tagging of all postcards and sundry bits of paper on a mounted long metal wire and bunching them according to the month and year of writing! The stored postcards served as archives to be dipped into whenever the need arose at a later date.

It is unfortunate that these simple pleasures of communication are lost on us today, thanks  to modern means of “touching base” which are stark to the extent of being impersonal.

The pleasures of expectation and eager anticipation no longer exist in the current humdrum of our lives. Gone with the art of letter-writing are many a nuance of communication that brought a smile to our lips, a lump in the throat, a choke in the chest, a tear to the eyes or a dimple to a romantic cheek! Nothing is left to imagination any more!

You wonder whether generation-next will have the time and patience for long-drawn-out methods of communication, but, if truth be told, even we are beginning to find the electronic means of interacting more convenient and user-friendly!