From pillar to post

Enough people still rely on the good old postal service and it would be nice if some of the money being whipped up for various causes could go into improving the conditions of these basic services

Some years ago, my neighbour was a young girl, a student from Sri Lanka. Every time she got a letter from home, she told me, the postman would make a great show of handing it over, pointing to the foreign stamps and suggesting that she give him something for delivering the special missive. Fed up with this little charade she enlisted my help and one day we jointly confronted him. ‘‘What to do, madam,’’ he responded unabashedly, ‘‘you don’t know our problems.’’ Increased workload, stagnant staff, incomplete addresses, the heat (it was the middle of a scorching summer), limited facilities, violent dogs — his list was long and startlingly credible. At the end of it, much against our will, we found ourselves feeling sorry for him. Since then I have seen it for myself. At my local post office, the walls are peeling — I wonder if anyone can remember when the last coat of paint was applied. A large and very prominent sign acknowledges the donor of a water cooler.

That is probably the only luxury in those dingy, dirt-encrusted surroundings. The amount of mail is so excessive that the mailmen have to sit out on the ground, in the open, sorting it out. Population growth, the stock market boom, the trend of sending greeting cards etc. have all contributed to he load. The figure, I am told, at present is something like 4,000-odd postmen handling 2 million letters.

And yet, all things considered, they do a fairly good job. Over the last few years, thanks to a change of address I have had to put in several requests for redirecting or holding mail. And each time I found the postal staff brusque but helpful and effective. It is another thing that other forms of delivery — courier services and e-mail — are becoming increasingly popular.

Yet enough people still rely on the good old postal service and it would be nice if some of the money being whipped up for various causes could go into improving the conditions, if nothing else, of these basic infrastructural services, unglamorous though they may be.

Blackmail though is still an unpleasant thing. The other day, I witnessed an autorickshaw being stopped by a small crowd. The ringleader, a dark, stocky man in a singlet glared at the driver and said: ‘Orissa!’ The others clanked their white coin boxes menacingly. The message was simple: no money, no passage. The hapless driver threw in a coin and was finally allowed to leave. God knows if the money collected would actually go towards cyclone relief. But even if it did, forcing people to donate with threats of violence is hardly a healthy development. Perhaps we need some sort of system of official approval to deal with charitable drives. It might not be possible to extend it to everything, but at least it could prevent major catastrophes from being trivialized.

The good news is that the Elephanta island is going to be spruced up. Apart from the change it implies for the local populace — which has lived with a glaring lack of infrastructure for years — it is a relief to know that the city’s prime tourist attraction is finally getting the attention it deserves. Though Elephanta has long been seen as a poor sister of Ellora, there are many who believe that in size and impact the sculptures at Elephanta are unrivalled. So far, however, this piece of heritage has suffered deeply from neglect. Old boats, the absence of picknicking facilities, the smell of urine everywhere — these are hardly attractive ways to lure tourists. Hopefully the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage and other organisations involved in the project will make a difference. Just one problem, though. Last time I heard from a group of women who had gone for a trip to Elephanta was that it was a harrowing experience on account of the young men who followed them around, calling, whistling, singing and harassing them in every conceivable way. Now if INTACH can get both the monkeys and the humans to behave, we might have a star destination.

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