( Recap – In the introductory part, I narrated about the circumstances, that forced me to seek admission for my post graduation degree course at the hill side location. Luckily, I had there my parental aunt, who happened to have her abode there. Besides, I too had described about my future plan to own a printing press and run a fortnightly magazine.)
The foot hill city, I mean my home town where I was born and brought up, after a considerable lapse of time of my completion of post graduation degree, in a natural way was now my permanent destination. Truly say, I had a short duration of staying as a student on hill side for two years and after that been shifted back to my home town here. In between this lapse of time, my home town became the “central point” for the demand of political agitation of a new separate hill State (province,) with in the Union Of India. This agitation took a fierce shape and after a long struggle, a new State got formed and my foot hill city was endowed with the status of Capital of this newly born province.
My this foot hill city, that once had a renown for cultural and educational activities; with the declaration of capital of newly born Province began to expand in a grotesque and unplanned shape and swelled in a proximity to a metropolitan city in life style. As far as, my personal matter of life was concerned, up to the end of the decade of 1980, despite of strong opposition of the family for opting my aptitude for journalism and writing ( as I told earlier, still they wished me to try for some government job,) eventually they assented to my wish. With their support and financial assistance, I succeeded to establish a printing press and along with that got my “fortnightly magazine” enlisted in the ‘Office of the Information’ of the government.
As I told earlier, it was an old era and in general, font typing was in vogue in small and medium size printing presses and a chain of skilled workers needed for to get a prototype of every printing material. This all was an arduous job which kept me busy round the clock. To my satisfaction, my fortnightly magazine was doing well since it mainly focused its printing material related to the issues of hill sides region, hence it was received with a warm welcome by the public of that side. This helped raise the number of subscribers to a satisfactory mark.
Side by side, the other local stationary printing orders too remained in conduit. This all helped me to sustain the bread and butter. The chief aim of the life was “Journalism” and my magazine was the main channel, that helped me to get affiliated with issues of public causes and I happened to enjoy all this. With the passing of time, the whole world was heading towards innovative technical and industrial changes and like wise new devices in shape of fax machine, computer printing etc, too became the part and parcel of the publication. In the field of telecommunication there too, so many innovations had been introduced.
Long back, contribution to the magazine happened to reach through postal services but later on fax and E-mail gradually began to replace them. But in total, a mixed system for this purpose worked and to certain extent still that exists. But mainly, the postal materials appertained to Right to information ( a vital part of Journalism) and certain kind of dispatch of stationary etc remained extant as the vestige of old system. The period of time, I am recounting here run at about the end of first decade of the present 21st century in India. Later on, android phone got introduced but in the beginning, owing to the high fiscal charges of data by service provider, it had not been adopted widely though after the year of 2014 it gradually picked the speed.
In all, the medium of postal service had reduced to a noticeable margin. This made me shift the liability to deal with such materials to my sub-editor of the magazine. Although, about the posts related to the writing contents, sent by some contributors occasionally through postal services were bound to be put up on my desk. The piece of incidence, I am going to relate occurred in the proximity of the year of 2008.
My sub-editor entered my cabin with an old registered postal envelop with some what guilt conscious and said, ” Sir, this particular postal envelop had arrived some months ago, though I happened to take notice of this and intended to put it before you either, but by slip of memory, I forgot to present it and it got mixed with other mails. To day, again I chanced to lay my hand on it, then I went through the name of sender and addressee, I found a nick name annexed to the editor of our magazine and sender’s name is too dubious. This made me recall that it was the mail, I intended to put up to your kind attention; hence I brought to your notice Sir!”
His this explanatory apology too raised a curiosity in me. I went through the the description scribbled on the proper place assigned for sender and addressee. It was scribbled, ” To the editor…..(magazine’s name) and in addendum inserted the nick name “Timmy.” This nick name at once sent strong surge of emotions into my whole being and in haste I glanced down at the sender’s name, ” From the site of Timru brook.” Concealing my all emotional nervousness, I betokened mutely to my sub editor to leave the cabin and in a numbness, as though, I was combating with an earthly tremor, I began to plunge into the vista of memory lane.This vista of memory lane was deeply related to the memoirs of my life of post graduation college life in the village of parental aunt in her village. ( End of the Part -2,cont’d). Penned by — Vinay Pharasi —–
