Today is the last day this grand old building will send out a telegram for the service of the Telegraph Department will be stopped. I wonder what it will deal with though?
Long, long ago when Colaba Causeway abounded with Hippies and the fumes of Hash over powered the fumes of petrol, the CTO used to be crowded with dirty, scruffy foreigners picking up money from home. When prosperity came back to the Western world and the hippies found themselves and became investment bankers, the building was cut into half, and juxtaposed with a modern tower called Videsh Sanchar Bhavan, a huge ugly monstrosity (whose loose marble cladding often killed a hapless passerby) thus ruining the topography of the elegant Indo Saracenic neighbourhood in the heart of Bombay.
While many people of my generation or older would be sad that another link to the past is thus being severed, there are literally millions who don’t know the difference between a telegram and a telegraph leave alone the spelling of the word.
“A telegram is a communication or what you send to a person,” I remember Mrs. Downey intoning in her deep sarcastic tones, “while a telegraph is the technology or the means by which you send a telegram”, simultaneously flinging a piece of chalk at one of the boys at the back who were more interested in watching the skirt ride up high on a thigh of the girl in front of them rather than learn the subtleties of words of similar meaning.
In the good old days when telephones were for the rich and famous ( or very important people) the telegram was the fastest way to communicate for mere mortals like us. And it was efficient too : I remember getting a telegram late at night from my father who was posted in the Himalayan foothills saying ” Leave granted. Coming by morning flight” or a message from my Uncle asking us to meet his wife at the Railway station at at 1500 hours on Monday 24th July with a hot flask of tea and parathas for her dinner as the pan-Indian train she was traveling passed through our town on that day.
But there are telegrams and telegrams and I often remember the story old Mrs. Rodrigues told me. She was waiting for her luggage to arrive when she got a telegram saying ” Truck felled. Luggage Late.” The poor lady not only spent several days in the same clothes but also mourned the loss of her best China that she had so carefully transported throughout the length and breadth of the country over several years and numerous postings. “But, can you believe this?” I remember her asking, ” When the luggage arrived it was all intact! When I asked the Transporter what he meant by the telegram, he said ” Oh madam, the truck broke down in the ghats.” Obviously the telegraph operator was not in Mrs. Downey’s class and didn’t know the difference between Felled and Failed .
Telegrams were also sent as greetings on Birthdays, Anniversaries, Weddings ( May Heaven’s Choicest Blessing be showered on the Happy Couple), Birth announcements ( Sharda blessed with Bonny Baby Boy. Mother & child doing well) or examination results ( Passed with Distinction) and the telegram deliverer would wait with open hand for a tip for being the harbinger good news. I remember particularly every New Year’s day the bell would ring at 6 am and a telegram wishing my father in law ( who was in Africa those days) a very happy birthday being thrust under my nose. Already annoyed at being woken up so early after a late night party, I would get even more mad when I was asked to shell out some money under the pretext that the sender of the telegram had short changed the Department!!!! This was a sure way of getting the sleep out of my eyes for not only was I paying for something I didn’t ask for but I was paying for a greeting for a man who wasn’t even there!!!!
Thus began my dislike for the telegraph department which would unfailingly show up for a tip for a service they no longer provided. So while the rest of the world may mourn the demise of telegram, I for one couldn’t be happier! This year I will have one less group of people at my door on Diwali demanding a tip .
