BANGALORE
July 13 will be the last day that the telegram service will be available in India. As we bid adieu to an era of communication, some of the employees of BSNL’s telegraph department in Bangalore take Bhumika K. on a personal trip down memory lane.
Katta katta, kada katta, kada kada…it’s not a language we will understand easily. But, for most employees of the country’s telegraph department, it comes as easily as their mother-tongue. It’s the sound of the language of Morse Code, the secret code of telegrams that only the trained knew. “Of course I remember it… it’s like learning cycling or swimming. You never forget it for life,” says an employee at the BSNL’s telegraph office in Bangalore, with pride.
While telegraph department employees won’t forget this service so entwined with their life, we have been quick to bury this 160-year-old telegram service, with faster means of connectivity entering our lives. Having been perceived as obsolete and loss-making in an age of mobile phones and the Internet have taken away the urgency of communication that was once the privy of telegrams, it makes a nostalgic exit.
Full report here Hindu
