My today's visit to the post office finally made me write this post. Every visit to the post office reminds me of the famous serial Malgudi Days. Why? Here is why ...
Its situated in an old structure, dating back to the time when British ruled us. It has those typical stone walls and red brick roof on the outside. On the inside it has that typical high ceiling, which requires a minimum of 10feet rods to suspend ceiling fans. It smells of old papers and glue, and of the wooden girders which support the ceiling. The men in the post office at times seem to be as old as the building itself.
These buildings always filled me with mixed emotions, on one hand when they would remind me of sweet past and of serials like Malgudi Days. Yet sometimes I couldn't feel one with them, because they also felt foreign to me, maybe because of their English architecture.
The part which makes me really uneasy, is when I see these grandfather figures in the post office working on computers. Trying to type, using only the index fingers of their hands. No-no don't get me wrong, I ain't against computerization or modernization of post-offices. But the setting of the post office, and of the huge mango trees in its backyard, make me feel that this building should be inhabited by babus wearing Kolhapuri chappals along with dhotis and a white long shirt, with paan stained lips and deep set eyes peering over thick framed glasses, with neatly oiled graying hair, the oil smelling of chameli . Don't get me wrong again, I ain't making fun of their fashion sense, lest I wouldn't call them grandfather figures. But, its just that all these years, one has the tendency of associating old buildings with old time babus, who sadly have become a rare sight now.
Now one can only find such associations in serials like Malgudi Days or one's imagination. It does make me feel uneasy, when I hear the screeching printers in place of the thuds of the rubber stamps, which were so typical of a post-office. It does make me feel uneasy, when I see barely a couple of people at the post-offices, when there was a time, one would have to wait for hours for his turn at the post-office. Although, we still have postmen who drop our letters at the mailbox and we don't even see them for years together. Whereas, there was a time, when postmen were friends, old uncles on cycles, those who helped you cross roads when you would return from school. Those, who shooed away the dogs, when you played with your friends. Those, for whom we would wait for hours, to deliver us those letters from loved ones!
I wish at times, I would get my old India back, the India which is now only a memory in serials like Malgudi Days!