• Friday, March 29, 2024

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Indian parliament’s postman Ram Sharan retires after 21 years of service

The Indian parliament building (Photo: PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images).

By: Shubham Ghosh

PRIME ministers have come and gone and so did parliamentarians. But Ram Sharan ‘Postman’ remained a constant attendant at India’s parliament. For the last 21 years, Sharan, who has been assigned the parliament beat, has walked up and down the corridors of power to deliver the ‘daak’ (mail). On Tuesday (31), the 60-year-old will retire and on the eve of the memorable day, he said he is content with his experience to have served “all with equal importance and without a single complaint”.

“You don’t get to deliver mail inside the House for 21 years if you make mistakes and bring back complaints,” Ram Sharan told Press Trust of India on Monday (30), three days after he dropped his final ‘daak’ in parliament. Had Monday not been Janmashtami, it would have been his last working day “in parliament”.

After long hours of walking from one office to another to deliver mail inside the sprawling Parliament House complex, Ram Sharan said he would take a few moments to quietly sip tea outside the Red Cross building on Sansad Marg and reflect on the day that had been.

“I never let anyone be disappointed. If anyone asked me about their mail not getting delivered, I’d make sure it reached them or at least knew where it was stuck. Be it a senior minister or an ordinary person like you or I, my job was to deliver their post which I did as best as I could,” Ram Sharan said.

Recalling the days when he started his journey (2000) at the centre of Indian democracy and the country’s powerful people, Ram Sharan said nobody wanted to take the parliament beat since the labyrinthian corridors and seemingly confusing rooms and doors appeared to be confusing.

“People were afraid to be posted there. They would request to be shifted within two days. In the initial few days, I, too, was confused as the doors were the same, the rooms looked the same and some paths would end abruptly and you ended up at places you weren’t going to,” he said in a phone interview.

But Ram Sharan soon had the map etched on his mind and he started delivering the mails to their recipients without any error with the help of the house staff members. The postman said it was not unusual for him to meet ministers or their staff while carrying out his duty and they helped him in small matters as they got familiar with him.
“Prime ministers and ministers, all these people kept changing, but my focus was always on my duty. The post office gave me a duty and it was my responsibility to perform it with perfection,” the veteran said.

Ram Sharan’s load reduced as emails replaced mails

Things have changed over the years since Ram Sharan took responsibility first. Those days, Mondays used to be the busiest. Every Monday, he would put three bags of mail, each weighing 50 kilograms, in the postal van which dropped them at the parliament library. Gradually, the electronic mail came to replace the postal mail and that reduced Ram Sharan’s load. Now, Mondays see one or two bags and the rest of the week, it’s barely 17 kilograms on average.

Talking about his routine at work, Ram Sharan said he would reach Gol Dak Khana at 10 am local time from his home in Faridabad. For the next hour-and-a-half, he would sort mails, make entries in the computer, load the mails and wheel out his cycle to make the one-kilometre journey to the parliament house.

“It’s a rule in every postman’s life to arrange your mail in a way that you don’t have to visit a place again. If you do that half your work is done. And the second is to be patient and courteous… because you spend about an hour in the office and the rest with the public,” he said.

The soft-spoken postman travelled his route on cycle every day, till one evening in 2011 when he met with an accident while returning to office.

“I injured my foot and was told to do office duty for two months. Even though my foot healed I still cannot carry heavy weight, so I had to let go of my cycle,” he said.
In the last 10 years, Ram Sharan would hire an auto-rickshaw from Gol Dak Khana to parliament library (paying from his own pocket) and walk back to office in the evening.

He worked with the Railway Mail Service from 1981 till 1989, also a department of India Post. In 1989, India Post put out a notice for postman vacancies, for which he applied and got through after writing an exam. Since 1989, after his stint with the Railway Mail Service, he has been covering areas around Mandi House, including Rabindra Bhawan, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan and the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) before it was shifted to Connaught Place.

“ICHR used to receive so much mail that it was heavier than me and the front wheel of my cycle would go up,” he laughed.

As he hangs up his boots, Ram Sharan said there are no regrets. It has been a lifetime of work well done. The father of seven children, all married and settled, now plans to become a member of the union of retired postmen. He believes it is important to keep meeting people and know new things or “else your mind stops working”.

“I was Ram Sharan Verma till school then I insisted on going without Verma. Now everyone knows me as Ram Sharan Postman. That is my identity,” he said.

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