By Hani Manjunath
The sun warms the cobblestone streets beneath my feet, the heat so relentless it can be felt even through the soles of my shoes. Deverayapatna is certainly not subjected to cold mornings, even in winter’s summit. Yet the people of this little village go about their business, wholly accustomed to this. They go about their business even when the gates to the local post office creak open and the postman himself looks out through the window, to see us approach. Renukappa beckons us to come in with a smile curving on his face, laugh lines crinkling. Quite in contrast to the weather outside, the inside of the postman’s home is kept mercifully cool. His office is a separate room with its doorway attached to the foyer of his house. The smell of paper and ink wafts up to greet us as we step into his small working space. Weathered brown hands finish stacking away what must be the latest post. The rustle of paper, the stacking of mail, they create a symphony, one I’m sure the weathered old man in front of us is familiar with. He grins and gestures for us to sit, “Come, come. Please do make yourselves comfortable.” The office, like the rest of the house, remains cool despite the blazing sun overhead. A lone window is cracked open to coax the breeze in. Multiple handmade posters, maps, lists hang on the pale whitewashed walls. The small room is surprisingly tidy and organised. A desk and some shelving area take up most of the room but it doesn’t feel cramped at all. Though that could be due to the occupants' cordial personality. Doubling as the postman and the postmaster, 64 year old Renukappa solitarily runs the only rural post office available for miles and miles. His work is certainly not easy, though that doesn’t seem to put a damper on his jovial personality. Although his work timings as said by the government is 8:30AM to 1:00PM, Renukappa complains that the four and a half hours span is not enough to complete his work. So rather, he dons the skin of a postman at seven itself and steps out to distribute the post at two in the afternoon and only retires at five in the evening. He receives the bags of post from Belagumba, a nearby village in Tumkur taluk. After retrieving the bags of mail, he begins registering all the mail, applying the seals and goes through the rest of his preparation procedure before he sets out at 2:00PM to deliver them to the neighboring villages, as well as his own. Renukappa delivers to the six villages under his jurisdiction. All of these villages lie in a 6km radius to where he lives. He also has a small handmade map hung above his desk that shows all the villages he needs to visit, how far they are, labeled with the four compass points (In kannada) complete with an actual legend! The closest of these villages is Maranayakapalya, which is 2km away to the east. The other villages are Prashantanagara which lies 2.5km away in the west, Kunduru and Bandepalya which lie 3km away in the north and south respectively and Shreenagara which lies 5km away. Despite this, all he has to traverse this vast terrain is a steadily aging bicycle. He truly is the postman featured in all those stories, the one riding by on his bike and cheerfully greeting the youngsters who run to welcome him. Our conversation takes a turn as we start discussing the amount of mail he has to distribute and his general workload. When asked about the changes to his workload with the development of online communication, Renukappa says, “The amount of mail arriving in the villages has lessened, but my work has only increased with the coming of all this. Magazines, bank documents and whatnot have only doubled in the past few years.” He huffs a laugh and continues, “Besides an old man like me doesn’t know how to operate all these phones and mobiles, how am I supposed to make my work easier?” Yet the work is not complete even after he returns home late in the evening. Renukappa takes account of all that he delivered by jotting it down in a thick, worn out notebook of his, so in contrast with the modernized way of storing data. Only then does this diligent postman rest. Renukappa also seems disgruntled over the fact that postmen like him do not receive pension. Noting the confused look on our faces, he further elaborates that he isn’t an actual postman in definition, but rather a “Gramin Dak Sevak”. The Gramin Dak Sevak (Rural Postal Service) of the Indian Post Office is responsible for handling different jobs in the postal department. They belong to different posts such as Branch Postmaster (BPM), Assistant Branch Postmaster (ABPM), Mail Deliverer, Mail Carrier, and Packer. Employees appointed in this branch are deemed as extra departmental workers and aren’t considered for emoluments let alone pension. They are involved in all functions, such as the sale of stamps and stationery, the transport and delivery of mail and any other duties assigned to the Departmental Post Offices/RMS. The Gramin Dak Sevak employees form a distinct category of employees in the Department of Posts. They do not form a part of the regular civil service and are not covered by CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972. Currently the government has no proposal to grant any pensionary benefits to them, other than the Service Discharge Benefit Scheme effective from 01/04/2011. Renukappa remarks, “Postmen like me, we waited for so many years, hopeful that some change would happen. We waited for someone to acknowledge our hard work. Even if we receive just a small portion of what all those other pension recipients are given, say a thousand rupees or two, then that would be more than enough. But nothing can be done. I’ll have retired by the time this changes.” A thoughtful silence descends in the room after this. This is when I take note of a poster hanging behind me with small cuttings, laminated and displayed on the wall proudly. Out of curiosity, I asked him about it. “Well, to be honest that poster is a small joy for me. The anchechiti(ಅಂಚೆಚೀಟಿ/stamp) poster as I call it.” he says with a fond small alighting on his face. He continues in a somewhat bashful tone, “This has become a hobby for me. A couple years ago the newspaper started releasing these stamps in the newspaper to honor all the famous poets, freedom fighters as well as other notable figures. I started collecting them as soon as they came out. Cutting them out of the newspaper, displaying them on my wall, it felt nice to collect them, to wait for the next one to come out.” And with that little admired memento we step out. “Renukappa, we have a pooja at our house today. Do come!” an old lady walking by in front of his house calls out to him. He beams at her and nods. Another villager passing by waves jubilantly at him and shouts a greeting. Renukappa chuckles and waves in return. The laid back relationship between the villagers and their postman was evident from the casual banter and kinship between them. Even though the rest of society may forget the old man who delivers post to six different villages, these people never will. The postmasters parting words reverberate in my head for hours after we bid farewell. The hope in his eyes, it’s not something one can forget easily. Little did I know that those words would soon become the reason this story would take shape. Those words would soon take root in my heart and would come to be the only motivation I needed. Before we left, he stood at his gate, leaning heavily on it and said, “Girl, write my story. I want to see if anyone will listen to those who’re unheard of.” The graying old man whom these villages welcome as their postmaster has his own untold story to tell. Has a personality unique, though often discounted. He is a 64-year-old man who commutes more than 10 kilometers on his decrepit bicycle and kindly extends his work hours to perform a better job. He is a man without a pension; all he has is his profession. He is a simple person who enjoys humble pastimes such as collecting newspaper cutouts. He is a man who has learned to appreciate life's little pleasures. But above all he is a lone postman who does what he has to, whether it be in the sun or in the pouring rain, he is a postman who always delivers.
By Hani Manjunath
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#unsung heros