BANGALORE: As the curtains come down on the telegram, it is a bit surprising that for a service seen as unviable, Bangalore BSNL office alone sent 5,346 telegrams in May this year. Perhaps they are an anachronism, these regulars who will no longer hear the cycle bell ring of the postman shouting 'telegram' from July 15.
TOI visited the BSNL district headquarters in Bangalore on Thursday only to find the machines have already fallen silent.
In April, 4,903 telegrams and in March, 3,946 telegrams were dispatched from Bangalore district. For shockingly, there are people in the IT city who do not own cell phones or landlines even. "The end was inevitable but will be a shock for those who sent telegrams regularly, especially to their remote native places. Now they have to depend on letters alone," said P Nagaraju, principal general manager, BSNL, Bangalore Circle.
After the bifurcation of the post and telegraph department in 1980s, telegram was merged into the telecommunication department. The Central Telegraph Office (CTO), now half occupied by the Bangalore Metro, is eerily silent. The sending of telegrams was long handed over to the postal department.
Ranganayakalu K, DGM (administration) of Bangalore BSNL headquarters, recounted to TOI how he witnessed the evolution from the 'katta-kat' era to the 'whats app' generation. "First we moved from Morse codes to internationally accepted codes called IA-2 codes, which too were discarded. From 1980s, we had in place the message storing and forwarding machines which were sort of bulky computers and then came the transformation of transmission systems. Earlier, the codes were sent through electrical wires sometimes, through three channels and sometimes 16," he recalled.
Then the Web Based Telegram Message System (WTMS) changed the way of sending telegrams through computers. "The most common codes were 18 or 16 or deep condolences when people conveyed their emotions through chits of paper. The number shrunk to 2,000-4,000 in recent years. Earlier we used to get telegrams from the weather department, SOSes from the navy and almost daily ones from the army," Nagaraju said wistfully.
There is a sense of grief in the department at the passing of a much-in-use service once upon a time. Employees working in the telegram section have already been accommodated in other sections. The Morse Code machine remains a keepsake and old photographs, all dusted, are touring the tables of those who worked in the section. The records have been stashed away in a corner of this big building.
Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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