Tuesday, July 30, 2013
MTV rolls out Imam
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Indian Telegram's last hurrah not over yet as 'taar' fails to show up
New Delhi: The 163-year old telegram service may have technically come to an end a week ago but for many who rushed to be a part of history by sending their last telegrams, the journey is not over yet.
Even after a week of booking their cherished telegrams, many - including those who used 'Taar' for the first time in their lives - are still awaiting confirmation that the messages have indeed been delivered to the rightful recipients.
"I booked eight telegrams on Sunday but none of them has reached. I rushed to book telegram, the service that I never used in my life, as it was turning in to history," says Delhi-based businessman Sanjeev Yadav.
"With so much delay in delivery, government has killed the meaning of telegram," Yadav, who stood in the queue at Central Telegraph Office for around two hours, said.
The telegram, once the fastest mode of communication, lost its sheen with advent of telephone and later with widespread of mobile phones.
Still, hundreds crammed into 75 telegram offices in the country to send souvenir messages before the service was shutdown after running for 162 years at a stretch. As a result, over 20,000 telegrams booked on last day of its service compared to daily run of 5,000.
Another individual, M S Seth expressed disappointment at not receiving telegrams till date which were booked for local addresses.
"I drove for 20 kilometres to book telegram, stood in the queue for around three hours and even in rain just because of emotions that this service will no longer exist. But after putting so much effort there has been no result. I just pray that my telegrams get delivered properly," Seth said.
No comments were received from BSNL, which was in charge of telegram service operations.
On July 15, BSNL claimed to have despatched 12,568 out of 20,000 telegrams that were booked on July 14.
On July 16, a BSNL spokesperson said all booked telegrams have been despatched with the help of using company's own staff and India Post.
Karuppiah, a 96-year old resident of Vadamalaipatti village near Trichy, received a telegram from his grandson Anand Sathiyaseelan after four days.
"This time I got telegram by post. It used to get delivered in around 2 hours even when I booked it from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for my parents in this village. There were many telegram offices earlier but the number is now very less. The nearest telegram office to our village was closed , I think, around 5 to 6 years back," Karuppiah said on phone.
Sathiyaseelan said his grandfather ran a business in Sri Lanka and had sent first telegram in 1934 to his parents.
First 30 words in telegram cost Rs 29 and Re 1 thereafter for every word - umpteen times more expensive than short message service or e-mails used for communications at present.
BSNL decided to discontinue the services following huge gap between the average annual revenue of around Rs 75 lakh compared to cost of over Rs 100 crore.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
After 163 Years, India Sends Its Last Telegram
After 163 years, curtains come down on telegram service
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Indians rush to send final telegram as 163
For 163 years, lives across the vast Indian nation have been changed by the knock of the khaki-clad postal worker armed with a telegram.
One of the final messages sent via telegram. Credit: APTNBut with the reliably of landlines and increasing use of mobile phones and email, telegrams are no longer the most reliable form of communications across the huge country.
Last night the state-run telecommunications company in Mumbai sent its final telegram.
The telegram office was overrun as people tried to send one last message via the antiquated system. Credit: APTNThe last telegram was sent soon after 10 pm local time (1630 GMT) from the Mumbai Central Telegraph Office.
A woman holds her last telegram. Credit: APTNThe telegraph office was packed as Indians rushed to send their last telegram to friends and family.
One of the last messages sent via telegram. Credit: APTN More top news 
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After 163 years, India's telegraph service shuts its doors
Boy, that was a long time ago. Yeah, like... Yesterday.
No joke. The Indian telegraph service of New Delhi has been bicycling messages across the city for a hundred and 63 years. Until now, that is. Cell phones and email have finally put the telegraph office out of business.
"In villages, people would wait anxiously wondering what news each telegram brings,' explains telegraph messenger R.K Royal, 'happy news sad news, if someone's had a son, if someone has died, the price of vegetables."
Believe it or not, until just recently folks in New Delhi, India have still relied on old-fashioned telegrams to send messages. And it may not be why you think. By most definitions India is not a third-world country, especially in centers like New Delhi. But getting important messages to the out-lying villages has been historically difficult. But as technology has advanced, the telegram has finally gone the way of the telegram. And for all the reasons you might expect.
"The very fact that you have to put each word in a column,' says Rosalyn Dmello, 'that you have to have a sense of economy about the words that you are sending, and obviously because you're paying for each word."
As quaint as it may seem. Stop. There comes a time. Stop. When old technology must simply. Stop.
Monday, July 15, 2013
India bids farewell to state
It was a scene that India hadn't witnessed for decades: lines stretching around the block, hundreds deep, of customers waiting to send a telegram.
But as the state-run telecommunications company prepared to shutter its telegram service Sunday, thousands queued up at the country's 75 telegram offices for a final chance to send one of the old-school missives.
RECOMMENDED: How well do you know India? Take the quiz.
Telegrams in India, as elsewhere, have long been on a backslide into obscurity, crowded out of the market by a flood of digital communications devices. In its last year of life, the state telegram service sent out only about 5,000 messages per day - 1.8 million a year - down from a peak of 60 million in 1985, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegram services, told the Monitor.
Still, particularities of Indian culture and history helped the increasingly outdated service cling to life in the country, Time reports.
In India, the telegram has owed its curious resilience to the two distinct advantages it has over rival technologies: it is already there, and it works, bearing messages rapidly across the country in places where telephone or Internet access is either nonexistent or erratic. For these reasons, it has retained a place in the country's official life. India's legendarily change-averse bureaucrats still use telegrams out of habit. Lawyers and courts use them to create written records in judicial proceedings. The army uses them occasionally to communicate with troops at remote stations. A handful of private customers use them too.
For 163 years, telegrams ferried some of India's most important political messages - helping the British squash an anti-colonial uprising in 1857 and carrying the news of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir to London in 1947. But they have also been the purveyor of far less historic news. Telegrams historically brought notice of births and deaths to far flung family members, and they are still frequently used by eloping couples to inform their families that they have run away for love.
"They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," said R.D. Ram, a telegram operator in New Delhi, in an interview with the Monitor.
The demise of India's state-run service comes seven years after Western Union ended its telegram service in the United States. But even as the telecom giants bow out of telegraphy, a number of private services have stepped in to fill the - admittedly small - gap.
Canadian company International Telegram (iTelegram), which began sending telegrams in the US after the Western Union closure, announced on its website this week that it has begun a private telegram service in India as well.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), the Indian state-owned telecommunications company, has decommissioned its telegram services as of July 2013. Does this mean the end of telegrams in India? Or, as some news outlets have reported, the end of telegrams everywhere? No....
Customers wishing to place a telegram order to India, or from India to other countries, can do so through the iTelegram web site. Service is available to over 200 countries. And yes, happily that includes India!
For many Indians, however, the closing of the government telegram service still heralds the end of an era.
"Soon this will all be history," said one Indian, who stood in line to send a telegram on Sunday, in an interview with CBS News. "Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
RECOMMENDED: How well do you know India? Take the quiz.
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India's 163 year
By Mail Today Reporter
PUBLISHED: 18:18 EST, 14 July 2013 | UPDATED: 18:18 EST, 14 July 2013
India's 163-year-old telegram service - which was the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - has come to an end.
Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the humble telegram was on Sunday buried without any requiem but for the promise of preserving the last telegram as a museum piece.
A large number of people, many of them youngsters and first timers, turned up at the four telegraph centres in the Capital, which have almost been forgotten in recent years, to send a message to their loved ones on the last day of the service.
Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, the service was made available to the public by the British East India Company in 1854.
Though started as a Morse code service, the telegram service evolved gradually with the use of computers.
Indians send last telegrams as 163
NIRMALA GEORGE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW DELHI - India's last telegram went out late Sunday, marking the end of a service that millions of Indians had relied on for fast communication for more than 160 years.
Hundreds of people thronged the 75 telegraph offices remaining in the country to send their last telegrams to friends or family as a keepsake.
The company cancelled holidays for staff at the offices to handle the rush, Shameem Akhtar, general manager at the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., which runs India's telegram service, said Monday.
The company says declining revenues forced it to end the service, which had become obsolete in an age of email, reliable landlines and ubiquitous cellphones.
Some of the last-day users sent telegrams to Kapil Sibal, India's minister for telecommunications, pleading for the service to be continued.
"The losses were mounting. It was not viable to have kept it going much longer," Akhtar said. That was especially true as the number of cellphone users exploded, with 867 million subscribers as of April.
The telecommunications ministry said it lost $250 million in the last seven years and that it was time to put an end to the service.
India's telegram service began in 1850, when the first telegram was sent from the eastern city of Kolkata to Diamond Harbor, a southern suburb nearly 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the city centre.
Over the next few decades, telegraph offices proliferated, wiring the vast subcontinent with a network that became known for its speed and dependability.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, more than 45,000 telegraph offices dotted the country, with tens of thousands of telegraph workers and delivery men dispatching more than 600,000 telegrams a day. From birth and death announcements, to college admissions, job appointments and court summons, the telegram was the main way tens of millions of Indians -- in the remotest parts of the country and in its teeming cities -- received important news.
Until recently, the government used telegrams to inform recipients of top civilian awards and for court notices. India's armed forces even recognized telegrams from troops extending vacations or from soldiers' families requesting their presence at home for a funeral.
It was not immediately known what mode of communication the government will choose to replace the telegram for these types of announcements, but officials said since a lot of work was now done electronically, government departments will likely opt for email.
04:42ET 15-07-13
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
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India bids farewell to state
Smart phones and texting are taking the place of the telegram.
It was a scene that India hadn't witnessed for decades: lines stretching around the block, hundreds deep, of customers waiting to send a telegram.
Skip to next paragraph
Ryan Lenora Brown
Correspondent
Recent posts
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
But as the state-run telecommunications company prepared to shutter its telegram service Sunday, thousands queued up at the country's 75 telegram offices for a final chance to send one of the old-school missives.
Telegrams in India, as elsewhere, have long been on a backslide into obscurity, crowded out of the market by a flood of digital communications devices. In its last year of life, the state telegram service sent out only about 5,000 messages per day - 1.8 million a year - down from a peak of 60 million in 1985, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegram services, told the Monitor.
Still, particularities of Indian culture and history helped the increasingly outdated service cling to life in the country, Time reports.
In India, the telegram has owed its curious resilience to the two distinct advantages it has over rival technologies: it is already there, and it works, bearing messages rapidly across the country in places where telephone or Internet access is either nonexistent or erratic. For these reasons, it has retained a place in the country's official life. India's legendarily change-averse bureaucrats still use telegrams out of habit. Lawyers and courts use them to create written records in judicial proceedings. The army uses them occasionally to communicate with troops at remote stations. A handful of private customers use them too.
For 163 years, telegrams ferried some of India's most important political messages - helping the British squash an anti-colonial uprising in 1857 and carrying the news of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir to London in 1947. But they have also been the purveyor of far less historic news. Telegrams historically brought notice of births and deaths to far flung family members, and they are still frequently used by eloping couples to inform their families that they have run away for love.
"They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," said R.D. Ram, a telegram operator in New Delhi, in an interview with the Monitor.
The demise of India's state-run service comes seven years after Western Union ended its telegram service in the United States. But even as the telecom giants bow out of telegraphy, a number of private services have stepped in to fill the - admittedly small - gap.
Canadian company International Telegram (iTelegram), which began sending telegrams in the US after the Western Union closure, announced on its website this week that it has begun a private telegram service in India as well.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), the Indian state-owned telecommunications company, has decommissioned its telegram services as of July 2013. Does this mean the end of telegrams in India? Or, as some news outlets have reported, the end of telegrams everywhere? No....
Customers wishing to place a telegram order to India, or from India to other countries, can do so through the iTelegram web site. Service is available to over 200 countries. And yes, happily that includes India!
For many Indians, however, the closing of the government telegram service still heralds the end of an era.
"Soon this will all be history," said one Indian, who stood in line to send a telegram on Sunday, in an interview with CBS News. "Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
India bids farewell to state
Smart phones and texting are taking the place of the telegram.
It was a scene that India hadn't witnessed for decades: lines stretching around the block, hundreds deep, of customers waiting to send a telegram.
Skip to next paragraph
Ryan Lenora Brown
Correspondent
Recent posts
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
But as the state-run telecommunications company prepared to shutter its telegram service Sunday, thousands queued up at the country's 75 telegram offices for a final chance to send one of the old-school missives.
Telegrams in India, as elsewhere, have long been on a backslide into obscurity, crowded out of the market by a flood of digital communications devices. In its last year of life, the state telegram service sent out only about 5,000 messages per day - 1.8 million a year - down from a peak of 60 million in 1985, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegram services, told the Monitor.
Still, particularities of Indian culture and history helped the increasingly outdated service cling to life in the country, Time reports.
In India, the telegram has owed its curious resilience to the two distinct advantages it has over rival technologies: it is already there, and it works, bearing messages rapidly across the country in places where telephone or Internet access is either nonexistent or erratic. For these reasons, it has retained a place in the country's official life. India's legendarily change-averse bureaucrats still use telegrams out of habit. Lawyers and courts use them to create written records in judicial proceedings. The army uses them occasionally to communicate with troops at remote stations. A handful of private customers use them too.
For 163 years, telegrams ferried some of India's most important political messages - helping the British squash an anti-colonial uprising in 1857 and carrying the news of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir to London in 1947. But they have also been the purveyor of far less historic news. Telegrams historically brought notice of births and deaths to far flung family members, and they are still frequently used by eloping couples to inform their families that they have run away for love.
"They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," said R.D. Ram, a telegram operator in New Delhi, in an interview with the Monitor.
The demise of India's state-run service comes seven years after Western Union ended its telegram service in the United States. But even as the telecom giants bow out of telegraphy, a number of private services have stepped in to fill the - admittedly small - gap.
Canadian company International Telegram (iTelegram), which began sending telegrams in the US after the Western Union closure, announced on its website this week that it has begun a private telegram service in India as well.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), the Indian state-owned telecommunications company, has decommissioned its telegram services as of July 2013. Does this mean the end of telegrams in India? Or, as some news outlets have reported, the end of telegrams everywhere? No....
Customers wishing to place a telegram order to India, or from India to other countries, can do so through the iTelegram web site. Service is available to over 200 countries. And yes, happily that includes India!
For many Indians, however, the closing of the government telegram service still heralds the end of an era.
"Soon this will all be history," said one Indian, who stood in line to send a telegram on Sunday, in an interview with CBS News. "Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
Curtains for 163
New Delhi: Curtains came down on Sunday on the 163-year-old telegram service in the country - the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - amid a last minute rush of people thronging telegraph offices to send souvenir messages to family and friends. Over 2,000 people, many of them youngsters and first timers, booked telegrams at three telegraph centres in the Capital which have almost been forgotten in recent years to their loved ones on the last day of the service. At the Delhi Central Telegraph office at Janpath alone, over 1,850 people had booked their telegrams. Seeing people waiting in long queues with multiple forms, the 10 pm deadline was extended to accommodate them, a senior official said. "I started my career in this office. It has been 30 long years here. There has never been so much crowd," said senior telegraph officer J P S Bhatia. At the telegraph offices in Kashmere Gate and Delhi Cantonment also people in large number lined up to send their messages.
Among them were housewives, college students, morning joggers in track suits, old timers and office goers lining up, taking time off on a holiday. Some children, accompanied by parents, also sent their life's first and last telegram. "This is the first time I am sending a telegram. It is for my 96-year-old grandfather who lives in a village near Trichy," Anand Sathiyaseelan, a lawyer by profession, said. A manager in a real estate firm Vikas Arvind said he was sending greetings to his parents in Bareilly. "This I hope they will keep it as a memorabilia," Arvind said. "Hope all is well" and "An iconic service comes to an end" were among the messages sent today. Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the end of the humble 'taar' (telegram) left behind a string of happy and bitter memories for people across the country. The last telegram will be preserved as a museum piece. the staff at the telegram counters were increased today in view of the anticipated rush. Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public. It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating. Though started as a Morse code service, the telegram service evolved gradually with the use of computers. At the time of its death, it had become a web based telegraph mailing service (WBTMS) which used emails to instantly convey message to the other end. Nudged out by technology --- SMS, emails, mobile phones -- the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it. Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones. It brought news of new borns in the family, deaths and job appointments among other things. For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication. Lawyers vouched for the telegrams as they were registered under the Indian Evidence Act and known for their credibility when presented in court. Bollywood was not to be left behind and immortalised the service with many sudden twists and turns in films being announced by the advent of the 'taar'. Pockets of rural India still use the service but with the advent of technology and newer means of communication, the telegram found itself edged out. "The service will now not be available from tomorrow," BSNL CMD R K Upadhyay said. PTI
First Published: Sunday, July 14, 2013, 18:14
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Curtains down for 163
New Delhi: The 163-year old telegram service in the country - the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - is dead.
Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the humble telegram was today buried without any requiem but for the promise of preserving the last telegram as a museum piece.
Nudged out by technology - SMS, emails, mobile phones - the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it.
Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public.
It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating.
Old-timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones.
For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication.
Lawyers vouched for the telegrams as they were registered under the Indian Evidence Act and known for their credibility when presented in court.
Bollywood was not to be left behind and immortalised the service with many sudden turns in films being announced by the advent of the 'taar'.
Pockets of rural India still use the service but with the advent of technology and newer means of communication, the telegram found itself edged out.
"The service will start at 8 am and close by 9 pm tonight," Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) CMD R K Upadhyay told PTI. "The service will not be available from Monday."
State-run telecom firm BSNL had decided to discontinue telegrams following a huge shortfall in revenue. The service generated about Rs 75 lakh annually, compared with the cost of over Rs 100 crore to run and manage it.
Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal had said last month that "We will bid it a very warm farewell and may be the last telegram sent should be a museum piece. That's the way in which we can bid it a warm farewell."
There are about 75 telegram centres in the country, with less than 1,000 employees to manage them. BSNL will absorb these employees and deploy them to manage mobile services, landline telephony and broadband services.
Faced with declining revenue, the government had revised telegram charges in May 2011, after a gap of 60 years. Charges for inland telegram services were hiked to Rs 27 per 50 words.
Within a short time of BSNL handling telegram services in 1990s, the PSU had a rift with the Department of Posts following which telegrams were accepted as phonograms from various villages and other centres from telephone consumers.
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
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Pune sends its last telegram, citizens mourn death of 163
The ancient telegraph machines here will now rest at a museum in the city, preserved for posterity for the text-tweet generations that would grow oblivious of this now archaic form of communication.
PUNE: On Saturday, at 5.10 pm, employees of the Central Telegraph Office (CTO) left work knowing that they would never return in the same capacity. For Pune, telegram services officially closed on July 13, Sunday being an off. But the telegraph office saw a busy last day, with 150 telegrams sent to mark an end to 163 years of communicating the joys and sorrows of Pune's residents. The ancient telegraph machines here will now rest at a museum in the city, preserved for posterity for the text-tweet generations that would grow oblivious of this now archaic form of communication. J K Sonawane, sub divisional engineer, CTO, told TOI that over 150 telegrams were sent on Saturday, though usually the office handled 400 telegrams (both incoming and outgoing) on average everyday. Though it has only been a year since Sonawane took charge here, he says he will miss the crisp and succinct timbre a telegram carries.Citizens mourn 'death of the telegram' Sonawane said, "We received the closure order one-and-a-half months ago and we are quite sad. Though the employees in this office know they would be accommodated in other departments here, they feel sad about the death of this 163-year-old medium." He added that though technology usurped a big chunk of the telegram's patronage, the medium still had its uses . "Telegrams were still used as legal proofs in courts, to convey messages pertaining to birthdays, marriages and even death, especially by authorities of jails and mental asylums. When the public uses the telegram, it only goes to show that they want to make their communication with the person on the other end more personalised," said Sonawane. And it was precisely for this reason why Udai Kumar Saxena, a working professional from Delhi, visited Pune's telegraph office on Saturday. He sent five telegrams to his kith and kin in Delhi and termed them as the 'last telegrams of the era' . "Telegrams have played an important role in my life, be it for announcing my daughter passing an exam or a marriage ceremony or even a condolence message. I was on a visit to Pune and thought to make use of the service one last time and thus sent four telegrams to my family and another to my friend in Delhi," he said. Among those mourning the telegram's death was Kulkarni Narayan Keshav, former assistant postmaster general, Mumbai, who had come to train and work at the Pune telegraph office in 1957 . He was in charge of the Pune-Belgaum line for a few days during his training period. "I would not be able to forget the 'cluck cluck' of the telegraph , which still echoes in my head. What is even sadder is that I would not be able to hear this sound ever again. When I heard about the closure of this service, I felt like I had lost a friend," said Kulkarni. He said that the advent of technology reduced the popularity of telegrams , as against a time when the office handled 40-50 telegrams every hour. "It was a telegram's personal touch that endeared the medium to so many. While working in Chembur, I once received an SOS message, which I had to deliver myself as all my messengers had left for the day. I delivered the telegram to the recipient immediately , but unfortunately, the person whose accident the telegram announced had already passed away. It was the saddest experience for me while in service," he said. The two telegraph machines at the CTO will now be preserved amidst other artifacts in a small museum in BSNL's Bajirao road office. "These machines are over 60 years old and will be kept alongside the antique telephones in this museum," said Sonawane.How it worked Filling up a telegram form Booking clerk counting the number of words More the words, higher the fee Rs 28 for the first 30 words, after which each word cost Re 1 A receipt issued to the customer The telegram fed into the WTMS (Website Telecommunication Messaging System) for drafting The telegram then going to different stations (destinations) automatically, where each such station had a code.
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163
Nudged out by technology - SMS, emails, mobile phones - the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it.
NEW DELHI: The 163-year old telegram service in the country - the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - is dead. Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the humble telegram was today buried without any requiem but for the promise of preserving the last telegram as a museum piece. Nudged out by technology - SMS, emails, mobile phones - the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it. Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Koklata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public. It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating. Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones. For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication. Lawyers vouched for the telegrams as they were registered under the Indian Evidence Act and known for their credibility when presented in court. Bollywood was not to be left behind and immortalized the service with many sudden turns in films being announced by the advent of the 'taar'. Pockets of rural India still use the service but with the advent of technology and newer means of communication, the telegram found itself edged out. "The service will start at 8am and close by 9pm tonight," BSNL CMD RK Upadhyay said. "The service will not be available from Monday." State-run telecom firm BSNL had decided to discontinue telegrams following a huge shortfall in revenue. The service generated about Rs 75 lakh annually, compared with the cost of over Rs 100 crore to run and manage it. Telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal had said last month that "We will bid it a very warm farewell and may be the last telegram sent should be a museum piece. That's the way in which we can bid it a warm farewell." There are about 75 telegram centres in the country, with less than 1,000 employees to manage them. BSNL will absorb these employees and deploy them to manage mobile services, landline telephony and broadband services. Faced with declining revenue, the government had revised telegram charges in May 2011, after a gap of 60 years. Charges for inland telegram services were hiked to Rs 27 per 50 words. Within a short time of BSNL handling telegram services in 1990s, the PSU had a rift with the Department of Posts following which telegrams were accepted as phonograms from various villages and other centres from telephone consumers.
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Saturday, July 13, 2013
Curtains down for 163
The 163-year old telegram service in the country - the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - is dead.
Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the humble telegram was today buried without any requiem but for the promise of preserving the last telegram as a museum piece.
Nudged out by technology - SMS, emails, mobile phones - the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it.
Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Koklata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public.
It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating.
Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones.
For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication.
Lawyers vouched for the telegrams as they were registered under the Indian Evidence Act and known for their credibility when presented in court.
Bollywood was not to be left behind and immortalised the service with many sudden turns in films being announced by the advent of the 'taar'.
Pockets of rural India still use the service but with the advent of technology and newer means of communication, the telegram found itself edged out. "The service will start at 8 am and close by 9 pm tonight," BSNL CMD R K Upadhyay said. "The service will not be available from Monday."
State-run telecom firm BSNL had decided to discontinue telegrams following a huge shortfall in revenue. The service generated about Rs 75 lakh annually, compared with the cost of over Rs 100 crore to run and manage it.
Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal had said last month that "We will bid it a very warm farewell and may be the last telegram sent should be a museum piece. That's the way in which we can bid it a warm farewell."
There are about 75 telegram centres in the country, with less than 1,000 employees to manage them. BSNL will absorb these employees and deploy them to manage mobile services, landline telephony and broadband services.
Faced with declining revenue, the government had revised telegram charges in May 2011, after a gap of 60 years. Charges for inland telegram services were hiked to Rs 27 per 50 words.
Within a short time of BSNL handling telegram services in 1990s, the PSU had a rift with the Department of Posts following which telegrams were accepted as phonograms from various villages and other centres from telephone consumers.
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls graying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
Friday, July 12, 2013
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
NIRMALA GEORGETHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
03:48ET 12-07-13
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
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.
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.
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
Nirmala George, After163yearsIndiastelegramserviceto.blogspot.com
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
03:04ET 12-07-13
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
By NIRMALA GEORGE Associated Press
Updated: 07/12/2013 03:23:59 AM EDT
Click photo to enlarge
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s-and well before the mobile phone revolution-the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the
growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls graying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family-whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she
said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone-and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision-for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
After 163 years, India's telegram service goes silent
Nirmala George, After163yearsIndiastelegramserviceto.blogspot.com
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.
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.
"People came in droves to send telegrams. We worked round the clock. I don't think we went home for days," he recalled.
Over the years, Morse code gave way to telex machines and teleprinters, and finally electronic printers and computers.
Before India overhauled its erratic landline network in the 1980s and 1990s - and well before the mobile phone revolution - the telegram was the only dependable means of conveying news across this vast nation.
At its peak less than three decades ago, a network of 45,000 telegraph offices served the sprawling country. Now there are only 75.
At the Kashmere Gate office, the growing irrelevance of the telegram is reflected in the flyblown calendars on walls greying with age, soot-blackened ceiling fans and a dust-covered chart showing 43 commonly used telegram messages to help customers find the shortest one for the occasion.
For the rare telegram user, it's the end of a way of life.
Abhilasha Kumari, a New Delhi-based sociologist, recalled the crucial role telegrams played in her small hometown of Sitamau in central India.
"The telegram was the only source for getting news quickly. So whenever there was any development in the large extended family - whether it was a death, or a birth, or news about that much-coveted government job, the telegram was the quickest way to get the news," she said.
In countless remote towns and villages, the telegraph worker knew everyone - and their family business.
Kumari recalled the time a telegram informed her family that a cousin died in an accident.
"The postmaster himself came to deliver the telegram. We saw him at the door, and realized something drastic had happened," she said.
While most of the remaining telegraph workers will be given new assignments in the telecommunications company, the informal economy that thrived on the telegram will disappear.
For nearly 35 years, Jagdish Chand Sharma has made a living helping illiterate customers write telegrams from his mat in a dusty corner of the Kashmere Gate office's patio.
In the 1980s, he would write about 150 telegrams a day, conveying the joys and sorrows of his customers with brevity and precision - for a small fee.
Today, he might get three customers on a good day.
Sharma has already equipped himself with packaging material and sealing wax, and has switched to helping people send parcels and mail packages.
"But it's not the same. With a telegram, you instantly made a connection with people when you wrote out a telegram for them," said Sharma, idly swatting flies as he waited in the sweltering heat, a pile of dog-eared telegram forms gathering dust beside him.
Since the June 12 government announcement about the telegram's end, telegraph offices across the country have seen a small rush of people wanting to send some last historic messages.
"We've decided to send telegrams to each other," said Tarun Jain, an IT professional, who had come to the telegraph office with a friend. "Soon this will all be history. Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
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