Postal Week: the postman’s cycle bell stays heard in official communication and in notes of nostalgia

In this property of instant messaging, the brushed jingle of the postman’s rhythm doorbell mightiness beryllium increasing feebler. Ironically, successful immoderate minds though, that jingle lone keeps gaining successful intensity, astir achieving the resonance of a gong. That is the powerfulness of memories, enhancing the past, sometimes to distorted proportions. But nostalgia unsocial does not buttress postal services. Belief successful its aboriginal does that too. As portion of Postal Week, presenting 2 voices, 1 connected the nostalgic worth of postcards and postal services and the different connected its continuing relevance successful this integer world. 

Ramaswamy Rangachari, a nonmigratory of Sholinganallur, is simply a overmuch recognised look astatine the section station office. When helium finds the services astatine the station bureau beneath par, helium does not flinch from sending retired a missive to the powers-that-be. His views connected however the Sholinganallur station bureau could up its crippled person been published successful these pages. If 1 delved into 76-year-old Ramaswamy’s acquisition and career, this obsession with postal services would look retired of the ordinary. A retired concern banker, urbane, much-travelled crossed the globe, lived abroad, and much importantly, tech-savvy, being an admin successful a hyperlocal assemblage radical oregon two, Ramaswamy is simply a patron of India’s postal services.

“My parent utilized to person a savings relationship and immoderate fixed deposits successful the Mylapore Post Office,” recalls Ramaswamy. “After I came backmost to India, I person been banking with the Sholinganallur Post Office.” For him, the station bureau is not simply astir monetary transactions. As a trustee of an NGO supporting agrarian education, helium personally mails receipts, scholarships, and teacher salaries done Speed Post each week. There is an aerial of officialdom and formality astir documents sent done carnal message that cannot beryllium matched by integer mail. And that is 1 of the areas wherever the humble postman connected the rhythm volition not suffer his relevance.

“I person to nonstop receipts of donations by Speed Post astatine slightest erstwhile a week. Apart from that, I person my ain deposits and different things to handle,” says Ramaswamy. 

The unwritten constituent successful postcards: memories

Prabhakar V, a nonmigratory of Anna Nagar, collects memories successful assorted forms — tram tickets, coins, books, mundane objects from bygone eras and postcards. Many of his postcards person travel from Moore Market, exhibitions and online forums wherever collectors traded surviving fragments of the past. Among his astir treasured postcards are 2 wedding invitations printed connected postcards. The first, from 1922, was purchased astatine Moore Market. Back then, a postcard arsenic a wedding invitation was a novelty — surely, if idiosyncratic attempted it, it would beryllium a novelty adjacent now, much truthful than it was successful the past. There is nary other embellishment but conscionable the connection itself, printed successful neat teal-green ink wrong a humble floral border. Below, successful precise Tamil, the details of the wedding are laid out: the date, the hour, the families involved, and an invitation extended with grace and formality. 

The second, from 1949, carries an upside-down station bureau cancellation, a tiny quirk that fascinates him. 

“Something different,” helium says. “Something you bash not announcement until you look twice.” This 1949 wedding invitation seems to bespeak a turning constituent betwixt contented and modernity successful printed communication. Neatly composed successful Tamil, the details are presented with bid and restraint: the Tamil month, the nonstop clip of the auspicious hour, and the names of the bride and groom written with measured respect. A tiny yet striking enactment appears astatine the bottommost successful some Tamil and English, “Presents avoided.”