July 1st National Postal Workers Day-The Postman Who Delivered Hope!

I was standing in a queue in the post office of our area when a post man walked in and informed the staff about the death of a retired postman named Periyasami. The name Periyasami rang a bell in my mind.

Was it the same Periyasami who delivered letters in our street way back in the late seventies? When I had a word with the postmaster it turned out, to my grief, that Periyasami whose death I just heard about was none other than my old postman pal.

Those were very hard days when I used to painfully wait for my test /interview / appointment letters sitting under the shadow of a big mango tree. Periyasami was a dark handsome man in his khaki uniform. No other person knew as much as Periyasami did about the agonizing  days of unemployment I went through in the late nineteen seventies.

I wrote a number of entrance exams and attended interviews conducted by banks, railways and other government institutions. Whenever he delivered a negative letter in connection with my job-hunt he would not go without saying some words of consolation and exhortation.

He was not like other men of his job. He was sincere to the core of his heart. However inadequate might be the address on the letters he was entrusted with, he would somehow deliver it to the right person. “Every letter is a child and it should be united with its parent, the addressor. No letter from me will go to the orphanage called DLO.” He used to say.

He was always punctual. You could set your clock when he appeared at our street end riding his Hercules cycle laden with khaki bags stuffed with mail- bundles. Even ordinary letters entrusted to him for delivery were as safe as registered letters.

On many occasions when I visited the delivery office where letters received are sorted beat-wise, unable to wait till he himself arrived at our street, to check if there was any letter for me, he used to scold me for coming all the way to post office itself for a letter that might not have come at all.

It was his well-wishing hands that at last gave me the appointment letter which delivered me of all the pains and sufferings I was undergoing. When he handed over that letter of destiny he somehow guessed its content and waited till I opened it in his presence and confirmed the good news. 

I hardly saw him afterwards. We shifted our residence to different parts of the city in the last forty years. That I happened to be at the post office when the news of his passing reached it was not a coincidence. It was an act of Providence.  As I was walking back home after completing my work at the post office I prayed for the safe delivery of the soul of Periyasami the postman at the lotus feet of Lord Krishna, the Purushothaman.