So the curtain is finally falling on the public facility of sending and receiving ‘telegrams’. like many other things of the past, this is now also considered a relic, which cannot sustain itself for lack of patrons.
The great invention of 1855 in British India is being wound up on July 15 this year as announced by BSNl, having been found financially not viable any more. Many of us would remember, like the dead art of letter writing to our near and dear ones, the days when a telegram was opened with lot of trepidation lest it carried some ominous news. It also brought good news like the arrival of a new baby in the man’s family as women mostly went over to their parental homes for delivery, or even the school or college result.
I remember the telegram that brought home the sad news of my naniji’s sudden demise and the devastating effect it had on my mom and us children. Hindi films of yesteryears often used this medium to create emotional and dramatic effect when some sudden good or bad news arrived in the household. Most children would not even know what a telegram meant to many of our generations. We sent telegrams to parents sometimes soliciting money during hostel days and then waited desperately for the sight of that wonderful person called dakia who brought smile on our faces — now kids withdraw money instantly from an ATM. But this bearer is now being made to sleep. Telegram will pass on to the arena of nostalgic memory.
Nostalgia is rather weird and wonderful human emotions that capture sombre moods connected with the memories of the ‘good old days’ or times, often with pang. It is perhaps a very sentimental phase of human thought process as the person undergoing those reflections is vulnerable and feels insecure with his/her present. It is like a human defence mechanism that ensconces its protagonists and provides a safety net. The word in Urdu — khalish for this type of feeling is almost untranslatable in any other language as that nuance is difficult to capture or convey — it kind of nags and badgers. To quote Ghalib, koi mere dil se pooche, tere teer-e-neem-kush ko/wo khalish kahan se laaun , jo jigar ke paar hota!
The genesis of nostalgia is said to be from a combination of two Greek words - ‘nostos’ meaning ‘return’, and algos meaning ‘suffering’ — thus nostalgia in a way is a return of suffering. And this feeling has no barriers, cutting across generations, nations and classes of people. Rob Sheffield in love is a Mix Tape had this to say, “the times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life’’. How more succinctly might one convey that twinge! Ghalib felt so much disconcerted by these thoughts that he blurted out like this, yaade maazi azaab hai yaarab/cheen le mujhse haafza meraa!
Perhaps every generation finds the times gone by as adorable and something to cherish. We often hear the words like, zamana kharab hai — a phrase that was used by our grand and great grandparents and now uttered by us too. Obviously times keeps changing for good or bad or at least its perception. If times were “bad’’ for our grandparents, then it must be worst now. luckily that is not the case. In many respect, we have actually progressed since then —more educated, healthier, safer, freer and richer than the old times, though not necessarily happier. But the old world charm holds tightly for its simplicity. That is because life’s pace has become very hectic and stressed out. The next door provision store in the past held lot of charm, so also the elite club, which then appeared very accessible but not so any more. One had enough time in the earlier era to catch up with neighbours and acquaintances. It was common to exchange pleasantries with them without waiting for special occasions — thus lot of community-mindedness prevailed. As an instance, the whole locality knew that hostellers like us have come down home for vacation and made casual and pleasing communications. It does not happen now with our kids. That kind of engagement is diminishing day by day in our urban social formations. While that adversely affects overall social bonding, it impacts the individual more in the form of alienation. A retreat, therefore, into the world of nostalgia creates a conduit for a person to travel from and to the two worlds that he finds difficult to bridge otherwise.
No wonder, Kris Kristofferson had this to say, “I would trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.’’ We may close by citing another beautiful Urdu couplet on the theme of nostalgia, dil ki khalish to saath rahegi tamam umr/darya-e-gham ke paar utar jayen hum to kya!