POST WOMEN

Even now I remember vividly as a picture, when I was in the IVth standard the teacher told us to write about a postman. It had stuck in my memory like a picture. The orderly, khadhi clad postman with his healthy stacked letters making rounds. His arrival waited in great expectation. How clean and almost holy he looked compared to the pot-belied businessman, haughty government servant or a pan-chewing bureaucrat.

Staying in the small town close to vizag, I one among the brood of children brought out by my fertile parents, had to stop my studies by school finals. After two years of aimless search when offered the job as a post woman, I felt it’s a Godsend gift. It fitted to my idea of an honest job.

Soon after joining we were provided a pair of beige saris matching blouse and a cycle to ride. Starting at 8.00 ‘0’clock in the morning my day winded up by 2.00 ‘0’clock.

I was a woman always fond of order. It was a pleasure and an act of great satisfaction to do things in an orderly manner. My beat was in the middle class locality and I used to enjoy in my rounds the order present there. The close-knit houses, used to emit a sense of order both inside and outside. The clean swept narrow roads with cow dung washed entrances the symmetry of exquisitely drawn ‘Kolams’ all were for me sight to enjoy in the daily beat.

The letters, the registries, the money orders and the parcels, I used to stack carefully in the brown bag given to us, for I knew and I could feel the importance of every little piece of paper carried by us. These tiny pieces of paper with words of magic written in them is going to link one human being to another, perhaps it may be even the vital link giving substance for their living, a News carried a emotion conveyed from their near and dear ones.

As the letter diminished from the pile one after another and finally got over I used to feel happy of a job well and orderly done.

I like giving letters to old men. Their days seemed to be centered on my arrival. You feel the good deed is done when you hand over the precious letter in to their eager and waiting hands.

Being a woman manning the post of a post man, people are always keen to know the tale of romeos and wolves. Suffice to say in my tenor of two years in the middle class locality in East Godavari, I have yet to come across either romeos or wolves. No doubt I have seen a suggestive look or a leer and smirk here and there. But I am too busy doing my job solicitously to dwell and underline on these hidden or suggestive looks.

The two years have not made me change my first opinion. I still feel it’s a God send gift. A day’s work done, I am always back home with a clean conscience and a healthy body to boot. We neither have to succumb to uneasy temptations or stay rooted like a dummy in one place as other professions calls for.

Daily I feel like a bird whose wings are prim and healthy, seeing the world go by in a colorful canvas as you do your honest job.