The demise of an era
AGAIN in so many months, the metro water and electricity bills were late in being delivered to my home address.
A creature of habit, I had not migrated all my utility accounts to my email address as is the vogue. I still prefer opening envelopes to read my bills, the same way I fancy reading the print edition of newspapers rather than the online version.
Or submitting medical aid claims manually rather than electronically.
In mulling over the mounting lateness of mail delivery, I could not recollect when last I saw a postman, a remnant of old world charm. Can you?
I have fathomed that postmen are indeed a dying breed – going much the same way as the milkman who delivered to the door; the weekly house-tohouse laundry and dry cleaning service; and doctors who made house calls.
I vividly remember the friendly face of the postman who unfailingly delivered letters to our house when I was growing up.
The same postman would work the route for several years before there was a change, so he became a familiar figure in the neighbourhood.
I would always pity the postman because his job meant a 15km footslog, with a 20kg load of letters on his back every day, come rain or shine.
Postmen have had to do battle with vicious dogs.
Then there have been the inconsiderate homeowners, who positioned the mailbox so far away from the road that it might as well be sitting in the middle of the lounge.
Some houses had no letter box, which meant the postman had to walk right up to the front door.
After reminding the householder on a good few occasions to get a letterbox, the postman would simply toss the letters over the fence if his warning went unheeded.
Who can blame him for his frustration?
On a sweltering summer’s day, the trusted postman would wander further up our driveway from the letter box and ask for a drink of water.
It gave much pleasure to reward him with a glass of raspberry-flavoured Kool-Aid.
What intrigued me about the postman is that he could deliver mail to the correct house even if only the street name was given with no house number, so good was his memory of who lived where.
Before we got a telephone service at home – a scarce luxury then – it was the postman who kept us in touch with outof-town relatives.
How we looked forward to the occasional letters and postcards from maternal relatives in Pietermaritzburg, today a mere 45-minute drive from Durban.
So too, delivery of monthly copies of the Reader’s Digest.
The history of postal services in South Africa can be traced back over 500 years.
We learnt during history lessons at school that Portuguese seamen would leave letters in trees and under stones as they rounded the Cape.
Other ships that stopped to take on fresh water would find the letters – and they would be delivered to Portugal three months later.
Not too late, if you consider the inordinate delays with our snail mail service today – a far cry from the days when the SA Post Office was so efficient that you had a daily mail service in some urban areas, with letters often being delivered only a day after being posted.
The construction of railway lines facilitated the expansion of postal services during the 1860s.
During the early 1930s, the first overseas air-mail service was introduced.
The air mail letter, also called aerogramme, has passed into history.
Thanks to Skype, WhatsApp video calling, texts and emails, there’s little need any more for the small pale blue envelopes with the diagonal red and blue stripes around the border, extra thin blue writing paper and multitude of stamps and post marks.
I remember that my father would communicate regularly with his friends in India by air mail.
The handwriting was deliberately dense, or the typewriter was set to single spacing, to fit more words on both sides of the air mail letter, which by some kind of miracle, became its own envelope.
There was always a huge thrill and excitement in receiving an air mail letter from the other side of the world about two weeks after it was posted.
The internet just can’t replace that warm, fuzzy feeling.
Also relegated to postal history is the telegram.
For the benefit of younger readers, telegrams were sent by a telegraph machine.
They were a fast way to send important news for people without telephones.
The telegram meant that human communication could, for the first time, travel faster than humans could carry a message from one place to the next.
A telegraph operator tapped the message out in code using a machine called a Morse key.
The message travelled to an operator in another city or country, who decoded the long and short taps into words, and then passed the message on. This was called a telegram. Telegrams were charged per word.
Hence, messages were kept short and unimportant words were left out.
Every sentence ended with the word “stop”.
Since time was of the essence, telegrams would be delivered by bicycle.
A local message could be delivered the same day while a message from overseas could reach you within two days of being sent by telegram.
Receiving a telegram mostly meant bad news.
Somebody was either gravely ill or had passed away.
But there were also happy times, such as to announce the birth of a baby or to congratulate a bridal couple, when a telegram would be sent.
There is an incident involving a telegram that still sits clearly in my memory.
My father had a dear friend, who had left South Africa at a very young age and had been initiated as a swami, into the order of the Ramakrishna Math in India.
The friend, born Chinniah Gounden, belonged to a simple, loving family in Avoca and became deeply interested in the philanthropic and spiritual work of the local Ramakrishna Centre, which was not far from where he lived in Malacca Road.
In July 1958, Gounden left for India on the SS Karanja and joined the Ramakrishna Order, later assuming the sannyasa name, Swami Brahmarupananda.
My father kept in regular touch with him, wherever he was posted throughout India, by air mail.
One day, in the mid-1960s, I accompanied my father to the Durban Main Post Office as he had to send a telegram to Swami Brahmarupananda informing him that his humble, aged grandmother had died.
A hawker, the fruit and vegetable cart she had been pushing along North Coast Road one afternoon had been run over by a corporation bus.
Even as a boy of about 10 or 11, I remember feeling grieved as the message, reading something like, “Grandmother passed away. Stop. Knocked by bus, Stop”, made its way from Gardiner Street to Chennai. The telegram counter at the Main Post Office would be kept open daily until the early evening and even over weekends.
I met Swami Brahmarupananda for the first time a few years ago and shared with him my link to the sad telegram of decades earlier.
I never asked if he had preserved that telegram.
Unlikely, because swamis generally do not get too attached to material things.
Incidentally, he passed away peacefully on November 2, 2015, in Bangalore at the age of 81.
I got the message within hours of his demise from a friend, Tim Sookdeo, who was told by his friend, who had got a call from India.
Thanks to the power of the mobile phone.
The telegram, like the air mail letter, the money order and post cards, has gone the way of the steam engine.
In these days of e-communication, not too long from now even the postman’s strong leather bag will become a collector’s item.
Already mail is being delivered less than once a week in urban areas.
The Post Office has suffered a decline in traditional mail volumes in recent years, in line with similar declines experienced by the majority of postal operators across the world as traditional mail, as a communication medium, is fast being substituted by electronic alternatives such as email and cellphones.
Perhaps it is time that I stopped being stubborn and got all my mail, including those astronomical Durban Metro electricity and water bills, delivered to my laptop’s inbox.
At least this way I don’t have to wait for the postman.
The situation is a seemingly strange paradox: on the one hand, with the smart phone tucked in the pocket, we can become aware of everything globally.
On the other hand, there is still the yearning for the charm of holding an envelope, hand-delivered to the letter box and predicting what might be written inside.
Soon it will be a final “goodbye” to Mr Postman.
But memories will endure of the good days when the postman was known for providing an honourable, regular service.