Remember the last time you wrote a letter? You may have to really tax your brain for this as it would seem like ages. The figures available with the main post office in Sector 8 have a similar tale to narrate as they have witnessed a drop by over 50 per cent in the sale of inland letters,aerograms and money orders. What,however,keeps its business going,is the speed posts that come daily to the post office in thousands. As e-mail and SMS have increasingly become an integral part of communication,epistolary correspondence is on the wane. The post office,until a few years ago,used to sell as many as 25-30 inland letters for personal communication daily. The demand for aerograms has equally diminished with not more than five being sold everyday as opposed to 10-12 earlier. Similarly,postcards,once considered to be one of the cheapest ways of communication with a price tag of 50 paise per card,also do not have many takers now. The post office claims to be selling not more than 30 such cards in a day. This change in trend of communication is also evident in the drop in personal mails that arrive in the post office,which is only a handful. Of the 9,000-odd mails that are distributed everyday across the sectors the post office caters too,around 500 are personal letters or greeting cards. The rest are letters from banks,insurance firms and other organisations. There has been a 50 per cent decline in personal letters. Till about four years ago,the bulk of our daily distribution consisted of personal letters but with easy accessibility to the Internet,it is e-mail that is ruling the roost. People do not have time to write letters,too, said Ashok Sharma,who works as a clerk at the post office. Money orders,too,seem to be on their way out gradually as around 20 are sent everyday now with most of them being sent by migrants. The demand,however,shoots up by about 20 per cent during Rakshabandhan. Most of the customers who send money orders are migrant labourers sending their savings to their family in other states. The demands pick up a bit during the festival season,but majority of them prefer to transfer money through banks, said an employee at the post office. The post office,however,has been receiving speed posts with the number touching as high as 10,000 per day. Most of this mail is termed official communication as they comprise appointment letters,notifications from Haryana Service Selection Commission and letters from Central Board of Secondary Education. These two offices make sure that there is a steady stream of speed posts for most part of the year. We distribute an equal number of speed posts across the township everyday. Even if there are no official letters from these two departments,we receive about 6,000-7,000 speed posts per day, said an official.
