Has anyone been to the Post Office that overlooks the Kodambakkam railway station? The building gives new meaning to the word "decrepit." It is a big double-storeyed house fallen into utter disrepair - original colour of the paint not recognisable, patches on the walls, window grills rusted, some missing, holes in the compound wall, a yard with huge trees, overgrown and filled with fallen leaves, tea cups and all kinds of waste. Inside, it was dark and very damp (from the previous day's rain) - there were puddles of water on the floor and water trickling down some walls, yet the staff sat at their rickety tables and chairs and went about their work. In this day and age, the conditions were really bad even for a government office. Didn't these guys protest? Most of the first floor ceiling had collapsed and perhaps only when that happened to the ground floor would these people be given a new office.

Everything about the post office was old - even the people there - there was an old woman sitting at a wooden bench outside sticking stamps on a bunch of envelopes; an old man chatted with the woman who was giving out stamps; another ancient man walked into the compound with a newspaper and made his way to a small ledge inside the premises and sat down to read! Don't the young use the postal services any more? Come to think of it, even my parents don't write letters much these days. With me, they keep in touch through email and call up ever so often. There is the courier service if anything urgent has to be sent. With relatives in other places, there is always the telephone. Even special occasions don't seem to qualify for the written word these days - this is the age of e-greetings - they are free; hassle-free, no stamps to be stuck, no need to post; one can write messages just as on an ordinary greeting card and there is an absolute variety of cards one can send too.

The post office seemed to symbolise the oldness and the out of date-ness of its services. Till about five, six years ago, I remember how big a role the postal services played in my life. There was the quaint Red Fields Post Office in Coimbatore near my college where I used to buy envelopes by the dozen and post all those special letters and the oh-so-many cards. There was this post box in the street next to ours, in the small suburb we lived in, that perhaps only I filled with letters. The sound of the postman's bicycle bell was music to my ears.

But then I forget why I went to the post office - I had to buy some stamps and inland letters which I still use to communicate with one of our writers, Mr. Pai, who sends in his articles via ordinary post (I can't bring myself to say 'snail mail' - it's so derogatory) because he does not have an email address nor a computer to type out his works.

Does this not seem paradoxical? There are many post offices in the city that function out of official looking buildings, where the whole office is computerised and everything is handled efficiently. This particular post office might soon become one of those. And if tomorrow finds Mr. Pai sending in his contributions through email, then I wouldn't need to go to a post office at all. Either way, it would be the end of a way of life…