Missives of dread or hope, enveloped in familiar codes

Officially, Himachal is 100 per cent literate. Officially, that is. This does not account for people like me who, on the rare occasions when there is money in the bank, can manage to sign a cheque but still use their fingers to do the simplest of additions or work out which month is which number.

Around a decade back, telegrams ceased to exist in India. Till then, you could send a greeting by simply writing down a number. For example, No. 1 read: ‘Heartiest Diwali Greetings’. This saved one the enormous trouble and effort involved in writing down those three words. In this old-fashioned copy-paste cryptic code, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, you could heartily greet a single or several thousand (or more) persons. This was so much better than saying HB (Happy Birthday), GBU (God Bless You), or HDG (the Diwali greetings). For a small fee, the receiver could get a missive that portrayed water lilies, bells parked in a corner, something that resembled a stupa or temple and for good measure, also depicted a couple of birds of indeterminate lineage.

At one time, across capitals, military stations and other places all over the world, when a telegraph office received the message: ‘Clear all lines’, alarm bells would start ringing. It meant that something serious had taken place somewhere and the powers that were had to be informed. Using another means of practically-defunct communication, Morse code, the telegraph was a vital means of communication through the 19th and most of the 20th century.

Replacing carrier pigeons, news could travel swiftly and reliably through overhead lines or undersea cables. This network became the backbone of communication during wars, diplomatic engagements and fed almost every major news agency.

In November 1918, it was a telegram in cipher sent to the Director of Central Intelligence, Cecil Kaye, who was in Shimla, which informed India that the First World War had ended.

The past few weeks have seen further changes in our postal system. The iconic ‘Registered Post’ has merged with Speed Post. Like the telegram, this was something that carried both dread and hope. Legal notices, appointment letters and heaven knows what else would not be slipped into the letter box, but carried right to the doorstep. With both impatience and impassiveness written on the postman’s face, a sheet of paper would be thrust forward and you had to sign that you had received the envelope. And if this had an ‘Acknowledgement Due’ attachment, there was no escape. The postman would wait for you to sign this slip and hand it back. The sender would thus be informed that you had received the missive of dread or hope.

Decades before one was officially or unofficially declared literate or otherwise, the hills did not possess the ubiquitous large banyan tree in whose shade sat the local moneylender and his munim, the motley collection of village wastrels, or the letter writer with a pencil tucked behind an ear. Unlike in other parts of India, where in exchange for a few paise or a couple of annas, a letter could be dictated and sent off, in the hills, the shade of a deodar tree did not shelter a letter writer who, for a fee, penned epistles of love or hate.

In India, for good reason, we do not remember the British Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, in very complimentary terms. The Doctrine of Lapse and other measures brought agony and misfortune. We allow this to overshadow another aspect of this highly complex man. Dalhousie, apart from having a hill station named after him, launched the railways with a file noting while sitting in today’s Kalpa, in the district of Kinnaur. He also initiated the electric telegraph system, started building the Hindustan-Tibet Road and in 1854, implemented the India Post Office Act, whereby a uniform postal system that was affordable came into being.

With the arrival of the postal service, but the absence of writing and reading, an alternative emerged in the hills — of which I was recently reminded. Parents who lived in remote areas but had some sort of access to a postal service would communicate with family — mostly children who were in cities — with objects placed inside an envelope where the address could, helpfully, be written by a postal official.

Someone gave me examples of the objects that were placed in envelopes. A burnt matchstick signified something, an unburnt one meant something else; fresh shoots of barley or wheat meant that the sender was alive and well. This code, understood by those who received them, was a substitute for the alphabet, Morse code or an emoji.