(Until 1951, mail runners delivered posts to remote parts of Kerala, running two miles every hour. Today, Kerala's only living mail runner lives in a corner of the state, and life has not been kind to him.)
Chapli
Kannan’s age is a consequence of his moods. In a matter of hours, it can vary
from seventy to ninety, and his moods, from an almost jocular sort of stoicism
to a grumpy and slightly more acrid version of the same. The age at which he
now is, and has, according to him, for a long time been, is one where the
banality of numbers simply does not exist. “You can call me an old man, that’s
what matters”, is the way he likes to put it.
It
is how he often concludes his anecdotes: with a nonchalantly delivered ‘athu
thane kaaryam’—‘that’s what matters—whose lilt and cadences are
capable of implying, at once, the mundane and the metaphysical. He married
Meenakshi because Madurai Meenakshi is his goddess, and ‘that’s what matters’;
he took up the job of an anchalottakkaran (mail runner) in his youth
because he thought he needed a job, and ‘that’s what matters’; he does
not regret leaving the job after a stint of eight tireless and more or less
joyous years because all those hours of running had by that stage rendered him
virtually crippled, and ‘that’s what matters’; he knows that he is even
now not, and never was, a particularly popular presence in his kudi, but
is least concerned about it because he doesn’t care, and ‘that’s what
matters’; he never bothered to share with anyone what he used to earn
because he could not think of a plausible reason to do so, and ‘that’s what matters’;
he is happy that he was born in the mountains because their very presence has
always been a source of comfort, and ‘that’s
what matters’; he is fond of spending long hours dreaming about and pining
for those eight years of his mail-running-life, unrepentant about this
predilection even when his wife accuses him of self indulgent laziness and insensitivity,
because those were the best eight years of his life, and, of course, ‘that’s
the only thing that matters’.
Chapli
Kannan, who now lives with his wife in a decrepit two room house at
Kanakkayamkudy, a settlement of the Hill Pulaya tribe in Kanthalloor panchayat,
is believed to be the only living anchalottakkaran (mail runner) in
Kerala. From his early teens to when the
Anchal services were absorbed by the Indian Postal System on April 1, 1951, his
job was to collect and deliver postal articles from and between the post
offices of Marayur—now a very small town renowned for its sandalwood forests—and
Kanthalloor—now a picture postcard farming village with a galloping reputation
as a tourist haven and a cinema location. During the time, they were two remote
villages in the Anchunadu valley of what was then the state of Travancore; presently,
they belong to the district of Idukki in Kerala, bordering Tamil Nadu.
Chapli
Kannan’s working hours started at 6:30 in the morning when he would leave for
Kanthalloor post office, eight kilometers from his kudi. He would then
collect the postal articles from there, and carrying them on his head would run
to Marayur post office, sixteen kilometers from Kanthalloor. After delivering
the articles, he would collect those to be delivered at Kanthalloor post office
and run back. Before 6:30 in the evening he would be back home. The routine was
to be repeated six times a week, Sunday being the off day.
As
if the task was not taxing in itself, the mail runner had to further raise his
endurance levels to account for the harshness of both the terrain and the
climate. The forest is dense and wears an opaque look even now, and the path
between the two post offices, though now part of a highway, is still a dizzying
concoction of serpentine curves. Monsoon rains are usually torrential;
sometimes even a violent rage. The winters, invariably, are frigid and chilly.
It is not surprising, then, that the sheer physical demands he had to once scale
on a daily basis have now become a source of considerable pride for the old
man. “32 kilometers of running and 16 kilometers of walking, day after day, and
week after week: Not everyone could have done that job. I am happy that I
could”, he says. Even for someone who does not give away too much by way of
expressiveness, the sense of satisfaction that permeates through his
recollections is unambiguous.
The
mail runner was provided with a two-foot long wooden staff to which was strung
a set of small bells. The chiming of the bells was meant to alert those on the
route to make the way clear for the mail runner: “Like a kind of horn”, says
Chapli Kannan. Everyone was bound by law to not obstruct the mail runner. “They
were not only supposed to stay away from my path, if there were any hindrances
on the route, it was their duty to clear them too. All I had to do was run, and
be on time.” The wooden staff served two purposes: it worked well as a running
aid, helping the runner to negotiate steep inclines and jagged curves; it also
was used as a weapon of self defense if in case the runner encountered an
assailant—in animal or human form. The anchal runner was supposed to
cover a distance of two miles every hour. Those who were late had to pay a fine
of one chakram. For ‘express mail’, the fine was doubled.
In
Kerala, systemic arrangements for the transfer of postal
articles from place to place is considered to have been first started in the
erstwhile state of Travancore during the early part of the 18th
century, when the state was under the rule of Marthanda Varma. It was
strengthened during the period when Colonel Munroe was the resident. The
department was called the ‘Anchal department. ’ The word ‘anchal’, in Malayalam
could mean fear or anxiety. A more popular, but unverified, etymological
explanation for the department’s name suggests that it might have been derived
from the word ‘angel’, the mail runner being an angelic messenger.
In 1770, following the footsteps of the neighbouring Travancore,
Kochi too set up an Anchal department. Anchal services, during this phase, were
restricted to government functions which included, in addition to transferring letters
pertaining to matters of the palace, the task of bringing flowers for use in
the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, and vegetables for the
palace kitchen. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the department was
opened to include private services too, with a fixed fare. Registered post was
introduced in 1865. In 1881, a new postal act was established, in accordance
with which the state of Travancore, under the rule of Visakham Thirunal Rama
Varma, initiated reforms in the Anchal department. In 1888, under the rule of
Sri Moolam Thirunal Rama, anchal stamps (one chakram, 2 chakram, 4 chakram
stamps) and anchal cards (1/2 chakram) were introduced. Money order system was
introduced in 1901. In 1903, 150 anchal offices were established and 179 anchal
letter boxes were installed. In 1921,
insurance business too was brought under anchal services. Shortly after
independence, the states of Travancore and Kochi merged, and so did their
anchal services. On April 1, 1951, the anchal services were absorbed by the
Indian Postal System.
It was through a teacher who ran a single teacher school in the
region that Chapli Kannan found his way to the anchal services. Kannan is an
illiterate, but used to hang around the school helping the teacher, whom he
fondly calls Aiyar Sir, with various chores. He says he never liked to hang
around in the settlement, and therefore used to spend most of the time in and
around the school. “Most of the people in the kudy would run away when they saw
someone from outside. I had no such problems. In fact, I wanted to go out and
not stay in the kudy all the time.” He was not interested in learning either.
So when the teacher asked him if he wanted to take up the job of a mail runner,
he did not have to think twice. “When Aiyar Sir explained the job to me, I was
very excited. But I realised how difficult the job was on the first day itself.
Slowly, I started enjoying the challenges. I never had to pay any fine, and I
was never once scolded by my superior officer”, Kannan says. The two aspects of
the job from which he gleaned the greatest contentment were the power that he
enjoyed—“everyone had to make way for me, and I could anything with my wooden
staff”—and the amount of time he had for himself—“I never liked being around
the kudy all the time, and chatting and working with everyone I knew. This was
a job where I was all alone, and it suited me perfectly.”
The salary he used to earn was perhaps the most significant incentive.
According to Kannan, he was paid Rs 1 for his services every day. “I used to
get my salary for off days too. Rs 31 for one month was a big, big amount then,
nobody in my kudi could even dream of such an amount.” He thinks Re 1 of those days must be
equivalent to a thousand rupees now, and replies with an insouciant shrug when
asked what he used to do with all that money. “You can always do a lot of
things with money”, he says. His wife, however, wonders where all that money
must have gone. “I know it was a big amount then, but he has not done much for
the family. If he had, I wouldn’t have had to stay in such ramshackle houses
all my life, or still work in the fields to feed us”, she says, in a manner
that could be playfully mocking the old man or one that could suggest a bitter
indictment.
The mails Chapli Kannan used to deliver were mostly official ones.
The region was a prominent estate area—the nearby Munnar being a major tea
producing region—which had a large number of officials posted from both the
United Kingdom and from various parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. One is not sure
if there was a postman in the post offices to deliver the postal articles to
the addressee because Chapli Kannan’s accounts are not always consistent. On
one occasion he says there was a ‘supplier’ who delivered the mails, and on
another he says the addressee had to collect the articles from the post office
since there was no one to deliver them.
The years of running had taken their toll on Chapli Kannan. His
legs used to swell up frequently, and his bones were hurting so badly that he
feared he might soon be immobilized. So when he was stranded without a job when
the anchal services merged with the Indian Postal System in 1951, he was neither
surprised nor rueful. “I knew my time was up. I could not have carried on with
that job”, he says. His wife says he could have at least made sure he had some
documents to prove that he was once a mail runner. “He has nothing left with
him to show that he used to be this and that then. Even then, I used to tell
him to collect some documents, but he never liked to listen”, says Meenakshi,
who never misses an opportunity to take a jibe or two at the delusions of grandeur
her husband always seems to be immersed in.
***
Sixty five years after the anchal services ceased to exist and
many communication revolutions later, the post offices at Marayur and
Kanthalloor, are still busy places. Neither V P Jacob, the present postman (the
official designation is GDSMD—Grameen Dak Sevak Mail Deliverer) at Marayur or U
Sivalingam, the postman at Kanthalloor have met Chapli Kannan, but according to
them, the nature and travails of their job are not too different from that of
the extinct mail runner.
Both Jacob and Sivalingam are not permanent employees of the
Indian Postal Service. They are part of the ED—the Extra Departmental wing of
the postal department started by the British during the second half of the
nineteenth century. As the name would suggest, the employees of the Extra
Departmental wing are considered to be second class citizens of the Indian
Postal Service. Though in theory ED employees need to work for only five hours
a day compared to the eight hours that a regular postman needs to clock, both
Jacob and Sivalingam aver that they end up clocking eight, if not more, hours
on a daily basis. While they earn around Rs 9,000 (as Time Related Continuity
Allowance (TRCA)) for a month’s work, a regular postman earns around Rs 26,000
for the same. They are not eligible for any pension benefits either. The
government is yet to recognize them as civil servants; the case is still being
fought.
More than 80% of the ED employees are posted in rural areas where
getting around from one place to another is still a pretty laborious task. In
Marayur and Kanthalloor, some of the Adivasi settlements are so deep inside the
forest that they are declared as No-Dak areas. “We try to reach as many places
as possible, but in a place like this there is only so much that we can do”,
says Sivalingam, who also runs a small shop in Kanthalloor.
Mobile phones and the internet might have, for all intents and
purposes, already consigned the inland letter and the postcard to the realm of
nostalgia, but the postman has sill a lot to deliver. Like the mail runner, he
too now deals mostly with official stuff—letters from banks, insurance
companies, and various organisations— religious and political included. Sometimes
he also needs to read them out to the illiterate addressee. Of late, he has had
to deliver a lot of telemarketing products which, according to Jacob, has
become a real headache. “These people, whenever they see something on the TV,
they just order. The postman has to carry all that to their houses, but then
they refuse to accept it. We then carry them all the way back. What else can we
do?”
Unlike the mail runner, the Grameen Dak Sevak Mail Deliverer does
not enjoy the licence of unhindered movement. Both Jacob and Sivalingam find it
amusing that their most ancient predecessor used to enjoy a privilege that they
don’t even bother to dream about. Their dreams are much more modest: to be paid
the same salary as regular postmen; to be recognised as civil servants; to be
given pension benefits.
***
Life has not been kind to Chapli Kannan since he ceased to be a
mail runner. For someone who was never really fond of farming or the
traditional livelihood options of Adivasis, eking out a decent living was
always going to be a struggle. That every job except one that involved running
bored him to death did not help matters; nor did his frail health or a tendency
to spend time wandering in and around
the wonderland he has created from the recollections of ‘those eight years’.
His rickety house is situated in government forest land. His wife
Meenakshi still goes out for work. “Otherwise we will starve to death”, she
says. She thinks if she can still work, her husband can surely help her out,
but Chapli Kannan laughs her off. His life’s job has been done; why toil now?
It is an attitude that Meenakshi constantly berates, but he pays her scant
attention. He still prefers to remain
lonely, often roaming around, mountain gazing.
Chapli Kannan does not believe in the sort of miracles that would now
bring him a pension for having once been a mail runner. He is also not one to
be regretful about the fact that he does not have any government documents with
him. “It was not why I decided to be an anchalottakkaran. And in any case, I
didn’t know that such documents existed or that I would need them in the
future.” The only regret he has is that he never went to school. Sometimes in
the evenings, when the fields around the rocks where he usually roams around
are transformed into gardens of fireflies, he wonders how different life would
have been if Aiyar Sir had asked him to join the school instead of asking him
to become a mail runner. “I could have written letters myself if I knew how to
read and write. People could have written to me”, he says, and following a
moment’s pause adds: “Maybe, then I would also have been tempted to read all
those mails I was carrying!”
***
