The good old ‘Telegram’ said goodbye on July 14 after rendering its service in the field of communication in the country for 163 long years. The last telegram will now be preserved as a museum piece for the next generations.
Though several countries are still continuing with this harbinger of good and bad news for centuries, India has ended the telegram service in view of the more modern and popular forms of communication of SMS, MMS, e-mail and cell phones services.
On its final day of operation on Sunday, the Central Telegraph Office of Bhubaneswar recorded booking of as many as 259 telegrams compared to a meagre figure of 10 the previous day. Though the deadline for telegram booking was 8 pm, the authorities extended it by another hour owing to a strong demand by a nostalgic public. Among the senders of the last telegrams was MP Baijyant Panda.
The once-popular Central Telegraph Office (CTO) at the prominent PMG Square near the State Assembly and State secretariat especially drew retired Government servants to it to as if to mourn the demise of this historic service. Bipin Mahapatra recalled how in the past he used to stand in a long queue here to send a telegram.
He said, “At that time, telegram and postal letters were the only medium of communication. I had to contact my family staying in my village each week as I was living at a long distance from them. It is indeed very hard and sad to bid adieu to the ‘Telegram’.”
CTO sources said that in the early 1960s this office used to send and receive telegrams with an average of 2,500 per day. later, with the invention of better and faster communication systems the number gradually slumped to less than 500 every month.
A retired employee of the CTO recollected how after the establishment of this office the major and regular beneficiaries were Government departments, journalists and businessmen as they had to send information on a daily basis.
“We hardly got time to have our lunch due to the workload. During the last five months, the average booking of telegrams was reduced to about 450 per month and the outgoing telegrams numbered 650, an official said.
The demand for telegram service during its heydays could be assumed as a second telegraph office was opened at Sahid Nagar in Bhubaneswar, he said. But later, the authorities decided to close it in 2007.