MARGINALIA
Life, Delivered
A postwoman looks back at her days working with India Post
by Divya Saibabu
One hot and quiet afternoon, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to a sight not often seen by many. In front of me was a middle-aged woman, around 5’3, in a white cap and a white sun coat that she wore over her salwar kurta.
She looked at me and said “Post!”
Almost two years from the day we met, we sat down on another quiet afternoon. She sat opposite me on her single bed with her mother close by, looking at her from the opposite side of the room. Mrs. Jaya Wavikar, now retired from the postal service, then began to narrate her story.
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Childhood
“I was born in 1961 in a remote village in Maharashtra. I do not recall the name of the village because my parents would get a transfer every year.” Her parents named her Asha thus making her Asha Bhosle. Her mother, Malti Elizer Bhosle was a government school teacher and her father Elizer Daniel Bhosle was a post office clerk, both had transferable government jobs.
Fortunately, some time in the late 1960’s, both her parents were transferred to Baramati, Maharashtra where they lived in a chawl ‘with Sharad Pawar’s bungalow behind us’. Asha and her younger sister, did not see much of this political figure. They were busy playing and having fun with other kids in the chawl.
She studied at a Marathi-medium school up to the 10th grade in Baramati. She doesn’t remember Baramati having an English-medium school. She says, “The only person in my family who knew English and could teach me was my father. But because he used to get frequent transfers, he was never at home. This is why my English is still not so good.”
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In the late 1970s, her father was transferred to the Pune General Post Office (GPO). Since their mother did not get a transfer to Pune for four years, Malti and her sister continued in Baramati. But when it did happen, it felt like she had come home for that was where they had many relatives.
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Where it all began
“In Baramati and in Pune, my father used to take me to the post office with him, quite often. My interest in the post office grew every time I visited. I always used to think: to work here would be really great” she says. One day, one of her father’s colleagues asked him what his daughter was doing. Mr. Bhosle said that she had just finished matriculation.
The colleague told him about a vacancy for a temporary position at the Hadapsar Gaon post office and urged that his daughter apply for the job. “With God’s grace, I got that job,” she says.
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Her parents. Left: Mr. Eliezer Bhosle, Right- Mrs. Malti Eliezer Bhosle
Her starting salary was Rs 139 per month and this inched up over the years to Rs 450. But then she decided to sit for the next post office exam. “I stood first in Pune. My math was good and my handwriting was good, plus I also had good interest in the field. The exams were not as tough as they are today and I had already learnt so much from my 5 years of temporary job at the post office.”
However she did not sit for the clerk exam because she felt it would have been too difficult to clear.
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Becoming a post woman
After she cleared the exam in 1987, she was posted to Wanowrie, Pune. “There were only men working there. I was the only woman.” That was nine kms away from her home in Hadapsar. The government did not give its employees any money to buy a vehicle so her father bought her a ladies’ cycle, from Singh Cycles, a famous cycle shop in the city. She would collect the post and deliver it on her “ladies cycle”.
Now that she was a permanent employee, her pay went upto Rs.1000. She worked there only for six months but was hit with reality soon enough. She was a rarity, and attracted unwanted attention. There were catcalls. The children hooted, “Post-woman, Post-woman, Letterwali, Letterwali!” And the young me would pretend that they wanted to know if she had any deliveries for them in order to strike up a conversation.
“There was an old man who lived with his grandson in Wanowrie. The grandson always came up to me and asked if his money order had come in. I used to be very scared of them. This one time I went to their house to deliver the old man’s pension, and the grandson was not at home. The old man called me inside. I was very scared and did not know what to do. I had to get the delivery papers signed so I went inside. He gestured to me to sit on the bed. I wondered why he was calling me inside. Nothing happened but I was scared for my life that day.”
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The postwoman at the desk
“For the postwoman who had not cleared or given their clerk exam, a special seat at the Shivaji Market, Pune post office was available. This was to make it possible for them to work inside the post office building. I applied and got that seat.”
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It was 1988 and now she no longer had to go on delivery duty because she had been appointed stamp vendor. “My work there was to sell stamps, cards, and to stick stamps on the letters and parcels,” she remembers.
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In 1989, another major life event took place in her life; she got married. After her marriage her husband changed her name to Jaya Wavikar. “There was already an Asha in their close relatives so they changed my name to Jaya.” She moved in with her husband to their home near Pune railway station. Even though the new house was quite far from her office, she continued to go to work daily to the post office.
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Ms.Asha Bhosle (before marriage) during the early days of her job
”Every three or four years the clerks used to get a transfer from the Shivaji Nagar post office but because I was not a clerk I did not get a transfer and hence continued to work there for a long time. Because of this I had the time to build strong bonds with a lot of people. We used to all help each other out with work. I made a very close friend called Anjali Nanda. There was another girl who used to work in a private office besides us: Antoinette. We used to call her Netty. She used to always hangout with us. Even though I was friends with everyone, the three of us got really close. We used to celebrate all the festivals and birthdays, together at the post office.”
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She tells me about one such event she organised. “The post office completed 60 years so we decided to celebrate ‘the birthday of the post office’. We organised a big programme together and a senior post official was our chief guest. At that time the postmaster of our post office was a lady, Mrs Salunke. And most of our staff was made up of ladies. As a joke we were called ‘ladies post office’.”
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Celebrating the "Post office's birthday.
Jaya Wavikar(Top row-Second to right) Her daughter(front centre) Her Son (right to front centre)
She had her two children during that time as well: her first child- Snehal in 1990 and her second child Ashish in 1993. Like her father, she used to take her children to the post office sometimes.
Fifteen years at the same job and at the same level, but she did not look for promotions.
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“There were exams for promotions called the post office clerk exam. We were given 5-6 attempts. I sat for 3-4 but did not clear. Everyone went ahead of me but I got stuck. I had a lot of bad luck. There were issues at home with my husband and I had to also look after the children. It was difficult for me to study.”
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So she stuck to selling stamps and sticking them on the letters with gum- the brown gum that came in a blue bottle. She did this for 15 years every day, 6 days a week from 10am to 6pm. She does not seem bitter, not about the same job and not about the divorce from her husband.
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A new chapter opens
After her divorce, she and her children moved back into her parents’ place in Pune’s Housing Board area for about two years before she applied for government quarters near the Yerwada post office. “I did not want to burden my parents so I decided to find my own place,” she explains. When she used to go to work, her parents came over and looked after her children. After a few years her parents moved in with her to her place.
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She continued working at Shivaji Nagar post office until the era of computers. In 2004, her 15 years of experience in stamp sales was replaced by the machine which made computer generated receipts/stamps. There was no need for a person to manually stick physical stamps. And so she was given a choice: either she retired or she went back to delivering letters.
Although, she did qualify for the job of sorting the letters with pin codes written on them, she was always passed over. “This one time, there was a vacancy for a ‘mail sorter’ at Yerwada Post Office but one of the seniors said that he had only one year of duty left and that he had had leg surgery so I had to give the spot to him.”
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At the age of 50, being the sole earner in her family and with two children to raise, she had no option but to go back to the job of delivering posts door to door. “I was very sad. For so many years I sat and did my work and at that age I would have to go out again.”
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No job for a woman
In July 2004, she was posted at the Dighi post office in Pune. This was about 10km from her place of residence at Housing Board, Pune.
Although by now she had purchased a scooter, petrol was expensive. She could not afford to spend her own money on petrol to deliver letter and she had sold the cycle assuming she would no longer need it for her desk job. So she got an old second-hand, non-geared cycle.
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But how was she to get the cycle to Dighi? She travelled there on her scooter. Once again, she says, it was her father who came to her rescue. (Throughout the interview, any mention of her father would bring a smile to her face.)
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“He came to my rescue, as always! He was 65 years old but he would ride the cycle all the way to Dighi while I rode my scooter alongside. Then I would park the scooter, take the cycle and go to work.”
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Her father would make his way home on foot.
Her father has always played a huge role in her life as a support figure. She says, “My father was very nice. He has always supported me.
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“I used to cry everyday”
Wavikar's father- Mr Elizer Bhosle, photographed at the post office where he was the postmaster
Back to delivering posts after a decade without any training and knowledge of the zone, she had to also deal with narrow-minded residents.
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One day, one of the other postmen who worked at the same post office made her an offer. He told her that he would teach her the entire zone in three days, if she paid him Rs.100 per day. So she did, “I paid him from my own pocket and I went around with that postman for deliveries and learnt the entire zone as well as I could”.
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Now she felt a little more comfortable and the job at hand looked manageable.
“I managed to get through six months there, before I was transferred to the Airforce Post Office (Pune)”
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Although now she was to deliver posts in a better postal zone, her troubles did not end there. They only got worse as time went by.She had to deliver posts in Kalas, a hilly postal zone near the Pune airport. Her deliveries were not limited to only letters and a few boxes like her previous job.
“My work only kept increasing because the post office took up all sorts of jobs. We were now delivering tax papers, board exam papers, bank documents, Regional Transport Office documents and book orders, online shopping deliveries...”
All this on her non-geared cycle up-hill every day!
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During the rains she had to carry her raincoat and extra plastic to cover all the boxes. She paid for the plastic covers and her raincoat and her cycle, all from her pocket. “When it rained, I had to pick my cycle up to avoid the wet mud from jamming the tyres. When they were still jammed, I would have to pick up and carry my cycle to a lake close to the airport and wash it there,” she adds.
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And then there was the problem that every woman in India faces: the washroom.
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She narrates an incident: “One day, I was out for delivery and I decided to use the public washroom in one of the housing societies. The society watchman started yelling at me. He told me that everyone uses the washroom and dirties it so I should ask his permission before I use it. I got very upset and went to the ladies in the society and complained directly. They all came down and yelled at the watchman. They asked him to let me use the washroom then on.
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“I started maintaining good relations with the people in different societies, with the watchmen so that in times of need they would help me out.”
Her body pains also began to intensify as the days went by. But she could not afford to pay for petrol so couldn’t use her scooter for a full day of deliveries. “We get eight days of leave each year, of which we cannot take more than two days at a time. We did get medical leave if we fell sick but applying and getting it sanctioned was a very long procedure.”
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Her parents and her children could not bear to see her suffer and so they insisted she use her scooter to deliver the mail. This is my memory of her, moving around the streets on a pink and white scooty, wearing a white coat over her salwar kurta with a white cap.
“So many times my bike used to stop. So many times the wheels would get punctured. If it got punctured I had to push till wherever the service station was. Many people helped me. Once someone tied a rope to my bike and towed it to the service station.”
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Losing her support system
In 2010 her beloved father passed away. This was a devastating loss not only for her but also for her mother. Mrs. Bhosle suffered from a slight mental imbalance and Even today, requires her daughter’s constant care.
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Wavikar educated her children all by herself. “School was expensive but I made sure I send them to an English medium school,” she says. Her daughter has a Bachelor of Computer Applications and her son is presently studying in Graphic Design.
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In 2012, Wavikar’s daughter got married. Since the family of the bridegroom did not make any unnecessary demands, Wavikar was able to pay for her daughter's wedding all by herself.
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When I asked her if she ever went on a vacation of sorts, with her family, she said, “Not once! No movie, no vacation, no garden.”
This has been the situation since she started working-1980s. She says, “What vacation can I think of when I didn't even get a holiday from the post office during the time when my daughter was going through childbirth? My in-laws used to think that I was lying when I told them that I am not getting leave from work. I cried a lot during that point of time.”
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The last post
To make matters worse she would often get double duty, that is, she had to work in the postal zones of her fellow postmen if they were on leave. She was already delivering in five large postal zones in Pune: Tingre Nagar, Sanjay Park, Airforce Quarters, 509 and Kalwad.
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“The number of houses in each area increases with time, new buildings come up and the number of residents increases. The government does not realise this and does not employ more staff.”
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With age, her back problems became severe. So she began putting in requests to her seniors to hire temporary employees if not permanent to assist her. Some of her requests went through or were shown on documents as “to be considered” when the head of the post office made calls to the concurred authorities. No new employees were ever seen. It ended there.
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From left, her son(Ashish) daughter(Snehal) and Jaya Wavikar herself
After all these years of putting up with everything she decided to quit her job at the India Post in 2019.
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“I didn't even get a proper farewell from the post office. My fellow post men organised a small party for me at the office. They got me flowers. When they asked the Post Master to come and wish me goodbye, he said he was too busy.”
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It was tough for sure but she had her happy days. Her fellow postmen were always nice to her and she had fun hanging out with them, chit chatting about the day.
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Her colleague postman Maruti Dharmashale Vilas Pawar says, “Although being a woman and having less physical strength as compared to a man, she never once complained about doing her job. She was always cheerful in front of us and never really caused any trouble.”
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Since 14 September 2019, Mrs. Jaya Wavikar is a retired Post Office employee. She quit some years before her term and so her pension is not as high as it might have been. She had to leave the quarters she had been sanctioned. Her pension, which is around Rs 14,000 (on a last salary of around Rs 40,000) runs the house. ​
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“Now I rent my brother's house and live with my son and mother. My son has still not got a good job and on top of that, we were hit by the pandemic. By God’s grace, the house is running with my pension.”
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She is optimistic about the future: “Once my mummy’s health gets better, I want to do some work from home. I don’t think sitting idle at home is a good thing. I’d like to do something like selling clothes from home. I want to be able to work and look after my family as well.”
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She is full of plans for her retirement. She says, “I want to do all the things I wished to do all these years but couldn’t. I want to visit my family and built my relationship with them. I want to attend weddings. I have worked all my life so now I want to work for society, for the religion...I want to make a group of women who are similar to me and now have time to work, so that we can go to hospitals and visit the sick. I want to do everything, if it’s God’s wish.”
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When she looks back at her time she says, “There were happy times and bad times. I felt proud and happy working as a postwoman because this job was nice and different from the rest. It was something women never did and I felt really grateful to God to have given me the chance.”
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She says that her only regret is not being able to wear the uniform of a postman/woman. “It is the khaki shirt and pants. I see many postwomen wear it now, but I never got to wear it. The post office did give money to get the uniform stitched but I never had time off from work to go to the tailor and get it done. It is my only regret.”
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And so we got her to find someone else’s uniform and got a picture taken.
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Presenting, Mrs Jaya Wavikar, post-person extraordinaire.
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