After Independence, What?
A letter to the spirit that raised me, He was born in the early 1920s, in a time when India was still a dream. Before the country had a name of her own, before the flag, before the anthem - he was already in service. My grandfather joined the Army Postal Corps around the time of the Second World War and served through its years and after. His work took him from Kerala to Egypt, Europe, and beyond as part of a system that moved words across borders, even as nations burned. He never spoke of war. But his words carried the weight of what he'd seen, and where he'd been. And perhaps that’s where it began for me, the sense that words carry something sacred. That a message, handwritten or typed, is not just communication, but continuity. A thread across time, between duty and tenderness, between home and the world. After Independence, he did not retire. He kept serving. Not out of obedience, but out of quiet alignment with something that didn’t need to be spoken aloud. He belong...