Post Office @ my village Kanamanapalli

 Our generation is perhaps the last  to be involved so much with the post office. It was so closely knit into our lives! - letters from and to parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, friends, lovers, spouses and of course the institutional letters some exciting and others disturbing, but never neutral.

In fact, the Postman and Postmaster have been eulogised in poems, plays, essays of yesteryears. I had a poem in my third standard in Kannada - my medium of instruction. That poem in first person talked about the postman carrying his shoulder bag which was full, distributing a thousand news. 

I was brought up in Bangalore and had seen Post & Telegraph office (P&T as it used to be called) at our locality Rajajinagar. It later got split into Post Office and Telegraph Office. It was a fairly
busy office which was exactly as described in our English lesson of 5th standard “The Post Office”.

My mother was from a village called Kanamanapalli in Kuppam taluk in Chittoor district of AP. I used to go there for every summer vacation. In those trips, the role of Post Office was fundamental. Mother used to write to grandfather a postcard about a week in advance intimating our travel plans. There was no question of confirming whether the postcard reached the destination. It was just taken for granted. Even when I was sent alone, it was same. According to the schedule someone would be waiting at Kuppam station to take me to the village. When I see parents checking on much older children in this cellphone era,  I am reminded of the faith and trust my mom put in the Postal system and it brings me smiles :-)

In contrast to our Rajajinagar post office, Kanamanapalli post office was extremely unpretentious. It was just a room on the left side of verandah of the residence of Mr Ramamurthy, the postmaster. He was not a full time employee, but more like a franchisee. He was a one man post office. He had of course one postman  Krishnappa,who had a long mane which fascinated me. He was doing a great deal of walking in delivering the post, as he was covering not only our village but also the neighboring villages.

Even with such a set up, almost all facilities were available - registered post, parcel, savings bank, recurring deposit, fixed deposit etc. One of the well patronized service was Money Order. It was slow alright, but it was very reliable means of sending money, especially because very few had bank accounts. On some occasions, my mother being the only daughter, used to receive princely gifts of Rs 10/- from her brothers and father through this great service.

Of course lot of changes have taken place and Indian Posts is reinventing itself. Telegraph is dead. Post is no longer the preferred method of communication and so the intimate letters from the beloved are no longer so exciting, as there isn't any waiting - it's electronic mail and instantaneous. The personal touch of pen is gone. 

With this background, when I came to my village after retirement, I was very curious to see the Post Office. Even now the physical infrastructure is the same and only two persons run the show - a postmaster and a postman.

But the methods have changed - an all in one POS machine has all the services. Aadhaar is a key element in delivery of services. The postman no longer walks across villages. He has his two wheeler.

The Post Office 

Closer view - Post Office

Seetharam - retired Postman. Post office runs from a room in his house

Postmaster Harikrishna with his POS, interacting with a customer - personnalized service you can never dream of in a city!