F1- PEN PICTURES OF MYSORE AND OOTY TWO DECADES AGO-1

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu

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INTRODUCTION

A TRIP TO MYSURU TWO DECADES BACK - A BEAUTIFUL ROYAL CAPITAL WITH DAZZLING PALACES AND GREAT TEMPLES

This matter is written --almost copied from a very old dairy of mine discovered after 22years accidentally during a casual search of a cabinet containing old books. The diary was not a simple old book but acted like a cinema projector generating images of 22 years back when I read it page by page, sentence by sentence! There was date wise narration, in total a matter of about sixty pages in a continuous section of the book ,about a visit to Mysuru and Ooty at that time. I remember the trip well even now as it was such a wonderful trip to a beautiful cool neat city of palaces,temples and gardens. Mysuru ( in faraway southern Karnataka state about 800 kilometers from Hyderabad) is one of the cleanest cities of India with a cool pleasant climate and is also famous wide and straight streets with gorgeous royal buildings and great educational institutions reminding of old royal glory.

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THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT IN WHICH I SERVED PROVIDED GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE SINCE 150 YEARS

More important for me , It was almost 60 years back that I underwent induction training for my entry into Indian Postal department (then called Indian Posts and Telegraphs department) at Mysuru city. And our training center was a real royal palace (purchased by our department for many crores of rupees)from the Maharaja of Mysore! We had our lectures in the royal halls for full three months staying in hostels right in the royal campus . The palace had huge grounds , a vast cricket ground and vast rose gardens.After 35 years of long service in the postal department I chose, for my “ travel -anywhere -in-India” free trip offered by government to retiring employees , a visit to Mysuru and Ooty along with my family. This trip took place 22years ago! I found a long detailed narration of that trip in the pages of the old diary of which I mentioned above. After a few years I altogether forgot the diary but not the memories of that nice trip.

As is natural, none can remember the daily and hourly details of any events that happened 22 years before, however interesting they may be. But to my surprise such minute details of the trip were recorded in that diary ! When I casually opened the diary and read some sections randomly ,the old imagery opened on my mind’s screen as if projected by a film projector. The images coming out of the old written words—truly sentence by sentence-- quite overwhelmed me . I wondered at the power of written words.

But to read old bulky text in faded ink is a task. It would indeed be impossible -- a slow torturous work to read the entire sixty page text. So I simply coped the entire text blindly a few pages a day -- with all grammar mistakes, idiomatic mistakes, unnecessary extra words etc-- into the laptop and then started to edit it . The ink in the handwritten matter spread on the old paper and often discouraged me to start my big project. But the journey to those beautiful cool places imprinted a never to be forgotten memory in me even after so many years and the “project” became interesting. I took up the work with much enthusiasm.

The Postal Department of Government of India ,we always proudly declare , provided since 150 years back many services to the common man-- whether of the big towns and cities or the faraway villages. For example through the invaluable Money Order service operated through the cycle riding uniformed simple postman , small amounts like even rs 50/- or 100/-sent by a son working in a faraway city , are paid within just two or three days to a poor old father or loving mother living in the village .The post card brings a bundle of news from a son or daughter to parents living in a faraway village home. In olden days believe or not, the farmer or vegetable vendor could deposit in his postal savings bank account in the village post office amounts as small as Rs10/- or Rs 20/- remaining at the end of yesterday’s spending. He could do it as stylishly as a rich city dweller depositing a thousand in a city bank.

For 150 years the telegram marked with special codes like x and xx brought in minutes from any corner of India to any other corner of India ( travelling over the telegraph wires coming over hills and dales) important family news —marriage of a son or daughter, birth of a child, securing a job, passing examination or even a shattering news of a death. Messages of death were given highest priority in transmission and swept all other telegrams aside for a few minutes till the sad message reached the destination.

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The Postal Training Colleges train officials from the cadre of postal counter assistants to the cadres of postal inspectors and high officers of Indian Postal Service. The institute at Mysuru is one of three or four such institutions in India .They not only impart the first induction training to new entrants but also impart training in management, modernization, computerization, mechanization etc of Postal services which handles mountain loads of postal traffic every day.

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OUR TRAINING COLLEGE IN MYSORE WAS A REAL ROYAL PALACE

I always treasured the memories of the beautiful city of Mysuru in faraway Karnataka with its gardens ,palaces,temples, scientific and educational institutes(which gave the city a modern progressive image) ,its wide and tidy streets and the “millions” of coconut trees . I well remember my two visits to the hill station Ooty in high Nilgiris mountains. While in service in the Indian department of posts till 20 years back , I visited all those places and many other places like Srirangapatna and the most wonderful Belur and Halebidu temples (visited frequently by foreign tourists to wonder at the exquisite beauty of the Indian sculptural art). I visited some of these places two or three times ,first in the institute’s bus and later in small friends groups. The friends were from all southern states and I remember some names even now . In the “journey-to-any-place-in-India” free trip described in the diary I went with my family to specially to Mysuru and Ooty as I very much wanted to show those places to them.

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I FOUND AN OLD DIARY ABOUT A TRIP TO MYSORE AFTER MY RETIREMENT

Now,(i.e. after 22 long years!) as I typed the matter, each sentence spread on my mind’s screen a mesmerising picture of a palace, a picturesque hill scenery, a garden of mesmerising beauty etc. The work which I thought boring became most absorbing and I typed 2000 to 3000 words per day and a total of about 12,000 words in a week setting aside every other work. Here and there I had to offer a little explanation connecting that old world to the present world! 22 years back I wrote with a “rural like” simple mind as I had still no access to or knowledge of Wikipedia ,Face Book etc and the several Internet sites. I did not yet use the table computer though I was a physics graduate.

The old world of 60 years back when I joined the grand postal department ( as a postal counter assistant) was a world of long distance rail journeys, radios, Vivid Bharathi programs and newspapers made of real cellulose paper. Even the black and white TV broadcasting only agricultural programs and a few dull serials appeared in India about that time. In those days we did not know the e-newspapers that now dance on the computer screen. We could not even imagine a future with silly new e-things like iPads, Tablets, USBs ,cell phones and streaming Internet . Now even air journeys have become so common as in the West of 70,80 years ago .Sixty years back we had to run to a cinema hall to see good English/Hindi films or old Telugu gems . Now however we are fed up with the hundreds of TV channels and often long for that old calm world to return.

Here I simply reproduce the sentences in the old dairy of 22 years back about our Mysuru trip because to read it proved to me as interesting as reading a long travel story. Some details are rather stale but were necessary.

Mysuru is at a distance of 800 kilometers from our city Hyderabad. Both my daughters are computer qualified and live in distant cities. My elder married daughter a postgraduate in computer applications lives in Bengaluru. My younger daughter was at that time in final year of a degree course in computer science.