It was a thrilling moment that died two seconds after it began – I was extremely flattered to be handed a telegram at work yesterday. Someone had chosen me to be a recipient of the last lot of telegrams that would be sent out in India. Who could it be, I wondered, and looked for the sender’s name.
“-- -- -- Insurance”, it read.
I was so deflated I did not even bother to read it for a few minutes. I dropped it on my desk and resumed working. Okay, so I hadn’t been nostalgic about the telegram, I had even forgotten about it till the news of the service ending broke, as I’m sure most of you would have. I racked my brain for telegram memories and came up with very mundane ones – wondering, as a child, what ‘grams’ on wedding invitations meant, birthday greetings from family, the news of college admission being confirmed, wedding wishes and congratulations for examinations sent and received.
Despite the lack of enthusiasm or angst about a momentous event, it was exciting to receive one, not for the object itself but that someone had chosen to offer me a bit of history, a collector’s item, a memory to cherish, be a part of a phenomenon. Incidentally, it came a full three days after it was booked on July 14.
As the marketing idea goes, it does seem to have taken advantage of the moment but to involve me in such momentousness as part of a mass marketing campaign? With a dire message saying that the telegram retires with no plan for the future and do I have one? Hardly romantic.
It reminds me of another anti-climactic moment, one even more absurd. Many years ago, I went to watch a movie at a multiplex. The uniformed personnel at the gate checked my bag and made me turn out my pockets. There had just been a bomb blast recently in another city and I thought this was a precautionary measure. It wasn’t. They were checking to make sure we were not carrying any snacks into the theatre – we wouldn’t spend money on their overpriced stale and greasy popcorn and samosas otherwise!
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