The Post Office

Oh, I love post offices!
The sight of this one on the foot of the Mall reminded me of our two legends: Tagore & Ghalib.
Originally written in Bengali in 1912, Tagore's play, The Post Office, narrates the story of a young boy. Confined to his house on doctor's orders, because of illness, Amal watches the people pass outside his window and greets all of them, and as he does, he teaches them and the reader some of life's simple truths. This is Tagore's allegory about a journey of spiritual awareness, written with his trademark gentle observations.

Here's a motley collection of Ghalib's sh'ers on letters.... As best as I could remember them.
लिखवाए कोई उसको ख़त तो हमसे लिखवाए
हुई सुबह और कान पर रख कर कलम निकले
Magar likhwaae koi usko khat to humse likhwaae
Hui subha aur kaan par rakh-kar qalam nikale!
(Should anyone wish to write my love a letter, they should approach me
Every morn I step out of home, with a pen stuck behind my ear).

गैर फिरता है लिए यूँ तेरे ख़त को की अगर
कोई पूछे की यह क्या है, तो बताए ना बने
Ghair phirta hai liya yoon tere khat ko ki agar
Koi poochey ke yeh kya hai, to chhupaye na bane.
(I see strangers walk about, your letter in hand
But if someone were to ask me, i may not be able to hide my emotions).

के ख़त मुँह देखता है नामाबर
कुछ तो पैघाम-ऐ -जुबानी और है
De-ke khat moonh dekhta hai naama-bar
Kucch to paigham-e-zubaani aur hai.
(Having delivered (your letter) the postman stares at my face
Is there also a verbal message (from you)?)

And as I started typing out this post, I was reminded of a rather graphic sh'er by Momin!
क्या जाने कह दिया उसे इजतिराब में
कासिद की लाश आई है ख़त के जवाब में!
Kya jaane kya likh diya use iztiraab mein
Qaasid ki laash aayi hai khat ke jawaab mein!!
(I know what I wrote to my love in a fit of passion
All I've recieved in response is the dead body of the postman)!!

Another Favourite Place in Shimla:

This post office is located in Chhota Shimla. I pass it each time I visit B & S (not Bourbon & Soda, I assure you!). But since the visits are usually on the weekend, I have always found the place shut, and have, therefore, been unable to walk in for a chat about its life and times with the staffers.
Since I am partial to blue, on the prettiness factor, I rate the Chhota Shimla post office higher than the one in Chaura Maidan. And everyone knows how dearly I love the latter place.
I have rhapsodised elsewhere about the romance of letters, and ink-wells and post offices, so I won't go into that again. My fond wish is that some day - some day - the government offices in India wake up and start constructing pretty public buildings such as this one.

Shimla GPO

See that white-and-green building in the far corner? That's Shimla's General Post Office. It was originally called Conny Lodge & actually housed a tailoring establishment. Its insides are rather marvellous: with pillars, twirling stairways and tiny vaults.

Our local heritage maven Raja Bhasin says that in the late 1800s, a red flag used to be hoisted on the tower of the post office to announce the arrival of the post. Local postmen would then arrive at GPO to collect the post for further distribution.

There's something about post offices!

I wrote about one of my favourites on this blog in March last year. Here's a picture of another, my all-time, no. 1 favourite, located on Chaura Maidan:

In honour of post offices, bearers as they are of my favourite form of communication - letters - here are some Urdu couplets I've read and liked over the years....
Qaasid ke aate aate Khat ik aur likh rakhuu.n
mai.n jaanataa huu.n jo vo likhe.nge jawaab me.n

(Alok, remember this one?)

Gair phirataa hai liye yuu.N tere Khat ko ki agar
ko_ii puuchhe ki ye kyaa hai to chhupaa_e na bane

And no post on letters can be complete without a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which lose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,—he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand … a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!—this, … the paper’s light …
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this … O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

My second favourite post office

I shall make a post about my no. 1 favourite soon.
But first, this one, located on the edge of the Mall.
At one time, it actually boasted of ink-wells & little bottles of thick glue, with a little pencil-stub that you used for sticking up your letters. This post office had the unique (to me) distinction of selling *pink* inland letters. Never saw those before I entered this post office & never saw them again anywhere else.

I'm reminded of Christopher Morley's "To a Post-Office Inkwell":

How many humble hearts have dipped
In you, and scrawled their manuscript!
Have shared their secrets, told their cares,
Their curious and quaint affairs!

Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen,
Have moved the lives of unborn men,
And watched young people, breathing hard,
Put Heaven on a postal card.