When P&T Believed Mails From Abroad Were Fishy

The Postal Department would not only be privy to classified information, but would also look down on those senders and receivers of mails whom they believed were working against national interest

There was a day and age when we depended on the Posts and Telegraph Department for everything: from letters to telegrams to money orders and radio/television licences, and in many cases even telephone and telex. The chosen instrument of delivery of not just the mail was, therefore, the not-so-humble postman.

It was an understood assumption that letters sent abroad with anything over a few rupees in stamps had to be physically taken to a post office, where the stamps had to be cancelled or franked, and the letter or parcel then handed over to the counter clerk who would chuck it into a box kept behind him for just this reason. Sometimes you stood in multiple queues for hours to get this done, because the same counter clerk was also accepting, weighing and re-confirming the stamp value needed, and only then would he cancel and frank them.

Whether they liked your face or not, whether you bowed and genuflected enough, and whether the various counter clerks agreed on the value of stamps as well as the authenticity of the address, all that mattered was whether your parcel was accepted or not. I can recall being told off for writing “USA” on an envelope, and made to write the full form, “as otherwise it could go to KSA”. Of course, by sending a thick parcel to the US, I was those days probably an anti-national! That was also the prevailing sentiment.

Initially, apart from outbound mail, it was all about ensuring that letters from abroad reached us, especially after the siblings started working and living in other countries, and sent not just updates on life via letters but also greeting cards and old magazines. Thereafter, when I started working abroad and returning home to India frequently, and had a family of my own, I had to ensure that my letters from all over the globe also reached Delhi.

As a result, not only did the postman know which countries I had been to in over the last few months, but so did the postal staff of PIN Code 110024. And they all wanted gifts from those countries too, especially if letters had been sent from Singapore!

This was one reason that I suggested, and then helped introduce, a system in the shore offices of a Hong Kong-based shipping company that I worked for, wherein all letters were sent to India in a huge bag, and then re-posted from India with Indian stamps. Incidentally, this was objected to by some delivery post offices, too, I was told, since letters with foreign addresses in foreign envelopes were being sent with Indian postal stamps, people were being told to write the address of the Indian office or just leave the “from” part of the address blank or to keep a stock of Indian “inland letters” handy with them onboard ships.

But it was only after I started working in India in 1983 that I learnt how the all-powerful the Post & Telegraph Department was. Put aside the usual moans and groans on getting a telex connection or telephones; ignore for a moment that the privacy and content of commercially important and confidential telegrams as well as letters were routinely violated; it was the delivery of official letters from abroad that could land one in deep trouble if the men in khaki were not kept in good humour.

I used to get a lot of mail from abroad in the mid to late 1980s as I had started representing a whole lot of foreign companies in trying to further their business opportunities in India: mainly electronic components, where I did quite well, thank you, but also other companies as diverse as manufacturers of armoured vehicles, water filtration plants, heavy trailers, high-speed printing machinery and more. Towards which, I needed them to send me dozens of catalogues and brochures, all to be marked “of no commercial value” and to be packed stoutly too. These were often posted in bags full of glossy paper, for which I would often have to go to the post office where they had arrived, do the needful, and then cart them home. Fair enough, we all have to eat, is the way I looked at things.

Till one day some Inspectors from the Postal Department landed up at my office. Here it is important to tell you that I had learnt by then that there was a two-step way to handle this.

1. Offer them tea and four biscuits, and then talk and agree about everything else except the subject at hand.
2. Let them know that the real business head was my father, who was very strict, so I would have to ask him about the business at hand.

This method appeared to satisfy such people then, and with slight variations, satisfies them even now. Of course, now that I am a grandfather myself, I can’t refer similar situations to my late father; I tell them that I have to ask my son.

The P&T inspectors told me that I was getting too many foreign brochures by mail. I nodded my head. They said they had, therefore, decided to investigate what my business was. I nodded my head again. They said that till they completed their investigation, all incoming parcels and letters would be retained at the post office. I nodded my head yet some more and doubled the number of biscuits on the plate. They said that, of course, some arrangement could be made. I told them I would have to ask my father but as a personal request would they release whatever had been held back so far.

We shook hands on this. The next day my parcels were released, and after that I have only used something new and what was just being introduced in India, then called “courier”.

Today, decades later, probably the best courier system in India, into India and out of India is from India Post.