In front of the egg paratha stall
I am waiting for Layla in front of her home, 🏠 and I am so frustrated that she is taking forever to come out. 😔 I wonder where she is. While I was grumbling away, a person came and stood next to me. He was wearing a brown colour uniform (khaki colour as I was told later!) with a parcel in his hand. 📮 My curiosity piqued, and I started chatting with him. You know me, I love a good conversation.
“I am a postman, your daakwala, he said, from the India Post. No one has asked me this question in a long time. I deliver letters and parcels too” ✉️📦he said.
I was scratching my head, wondering what that was. I thought everything came from Amazon.
I secretly thought it was all MAGIC! Like Harry Potter stories, someone waved their wand and bang, 💥 all our parcels arrived.
The Indian Postal System is one of the oldest systems in the world for sending messages from one person to another. We are "baap dada and tatha of Amazon and Delhivery”, said the postman proudly puffing his chest out.
This got me curious. 😲 Tell me more, I urged him. He told me all about how the postal system came about in India.
Hundreds of years ago, India had kings and queens before our current system of prime minister and president. 👑 Did you know this? Kings and Queens were the only ones who could send messages to neighboring kingdoms. Sending post was very expensive 🤑 before as a person needed to travel from one kingdom to another to give the message. 💬
In my surprise, I asked him, No whatsapp then? 😱 The postman went, “Oh girl! There was no digital technology yet. 🤳💻We’ll eventually come from walking from one kingdom to another to sending a whatsapp! But it took hundreds of years.”
Our first record of a post sent is from the time of the ruler, Allauddin Khilji in the year 1296. This was sent with a horse messenger. So, someone rode on a horse for kilometers together to deliver a letter. 1296 – 2023 =727 years old.
That's like super, super old!
I bet it took a really long time to deliver letters back then. And here I cannot even hold my excitement when someone says they have ordered biryani and it will get delivered in 30 minutes. I feel like 30 minutes is a long long time to wait.
I had to take a long sip of water. I have only blown out 7 candles and 727 candles feel like it's impossible! 🎂🎉 Postman tatha said that India is one of the oldest countries in the world. So, when the famous Moroccan explorer, Ibn Batuta came to India, he was stunned at our system of post by horse and foot messengers taking messages from citizens and not just kings and queens. Imagine how cool it must have been for explorers to see our advanced postal system! We, Indians are smart cookies indeed!
One of India’s kings, Sher Shah Suri, a super smart ruler, made the "horse dak" system that could travel up to 2000 miles or 3200 kilometers to deliver a letter! That's a really, really long road. But untill now, I only knew of Siddharth Malhotra being Shershaah! Hehehe 😂😂
I had so much fun talking to the postman tatha. Next time I see the postman, I'll ask for more stories!
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