NEW DELHI — For 163 years, lives across the vast Indian nation have been upended by the knock of the khaki-clad postal worker armed with a telegram.
Families used them to announce births and deaths, the government used them to post job openings, young lovers sent them to tell their folks that they had eloped.
No longer.
On Monday, the state-run telecommunications company will send its final telegram, closing down a service that fast became a relic in an age of email, reliable landlines and ubiquitous cellphones.
The fact that the telegram survived this long is a testament to how deeply woven it is into the fabric of Indian society. In much of the rest of the world, telegrams long ago were relegated to novelty services used by people who wanted to indulge in a bit of nostalgia.
AP
Telegraph officer Baljit Singh checks a telegram message of a customer at the Kashmere Gate telegraph office in New Delhi, India. On July 15, 2013, the state-run telecommunications company will send its final telegram, closing down a service that fast became a relic in an age of email, reliable land lines and ubiquitous cellphones.
Just 30 years ago the telegram was king in India. But the service has lost $250 million in just the last seven years as national cellphone subscriptions hit 867 million in April, more than double the number of just four years ago.
"Most people who come in now are those who want to send a telegram for an official reason," said Lata Harit, a telegraph officer at Delhi's historic Kashmere Gate Telegraph Office. "It's no longer about a birth in the family or a death. For that people rely on their telephones or cellphones."
The nearly empty telegraph office was a far cry, she said, from the days when long lines of customers crowded in the British-colonial style building close to the teeming heart of old Delhi to send a telegram. From 10,000 telegrams a day, the office now sends about 100.
The government still uses telegrams to inform recipients of top civilian awards and for court notices. India's armed forces recognize telegrams from troops extending their vacation or from soldiers' families demanding their presence at home for a funeral. Lawyers still send telegrams to create an official record, for example, to prove to a judge that they had complained their client was subjected to police abuse.
When Harit joined the service more than three decades ago, she underwent six months of training at a school for telegraph operators. Telegrams were sent using the complex dots and dashes of Morse code that had to be decoded at their destination.
"It required enormous concentration to decipher, but some of us were so good at our work, and so fast, that at the end of a day, we would feel exhilarated," she said. "It made us feel proud."
Other operators felt they were important messengers for crucial news.
Baljit Singh, who became a telegraph operator in 1972 and will retire in a few months, recalled the frenetic rush following the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the days of political turmoil and street violence that followed.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
Dengan url
http://solusiagarsehat.blogspot.com/2013/07/indias-telegram-service-goes-dark-after.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar