In an age on e-communication, Bhim Bahadur Tamang still makes the
once-a-week stop at the Sherathang border post to exchange mail with his
Chinese counterpart, an exercise that has persisted through the years.
Postman Bhim Bahadur Tamang at the Sherathang border post. Tamang
trudges through snow once a week to deliver mail across the Nathu La
pass in Sikkim.(Wang Chen)
Bhim Bahadur Tamang is a diminutive man who has been a postman for more
than 25 years, an increasingly thankless job in a world of digital
communication.
But for three minutes every Thursday morning, the 61-year-old acts as
the bridge between India and China as he trudges through metres of snow
at 14,000 feet to deliver mail across the mountainous border pass of
Nathu La in Sikkim.
Dressed usually in a windcheater jacket with a cap protecting his ears
and head in temperatures that drop to -20 degrees in winter, Tamang
crosses the barbed wire fence marking the Indian border at 8:30am, and
enters a shed on the Chinese side, not illegally, but with the official
sanction of both nations.
As Indian and Chinese troops and their artillery are stationed
eyeball-to-eyeball outside, inside the shed mailbags are exchanged
between Tamang and his Chinese counterpart without a word being spoken.
“It is a very short process,” Tamang, a postal departmental employee,
tells Hindustan Times sitting at the Sherethang border post office
ringed by snow-capped mountains on all sides.
“We just exchange bags, sign the mail manifest and leave the shed. There
is no conversation whatsoever — I speak Nepali and Hindi, my Chinese
friend follows neither.”
An Indo-Chinese agreement in 1992 formally recognised the exchange of
mail through the famous Nathu La Pass border post, about 55 km from
Sikkim’s capital Gangtok.
The mail exchange is never postponed or stopped, even at the height of
tensions between the two Asian neighbours over festering border
disputes, says Tamang who took over in 1991 from a predecessor who once
carried the mail for Sikkim’s erstwhile monarchs, the Chogyal.
Tough to replace
Nathu La grabbed national headlines after a skirmish between the Indian
and Chinese troops during the Chinese aggression on the border state in
1967. Even today, the post is zealously guarded by the army.
Tamang lives in east Sikkim’s Sherathang village, about 7 km from the
border. The weather here is fickle, and even in summer a thin film of
freezing mist descends across the peaks, making it hard to see anything.
Tamang’s village is one of the few that dot the area’s craggy
landscape, a terrain so tough that not many people would like to take
Tamang’s job.
Every week, Tamang treks the distance to the border and back.For his
efforts, Tamang makes just Rs 13,000 a month, another reason why the
postal department has struggled to find a successor for the ageing man.
But who does the unique mail exchange benefit? Mostly Tibetan refugees
and people in the border villages write to their families across the
border, says an official at the army’s 77 Field Post Office at Tadong in
Gangtok.
Mails for Tibet are directed to the India Post’s Siliguri office, from
where the letters are sent to the army’s 77 Field post office at Tadong,
he says.
“The mail, mostly letters are vetted and then sealed in a bag and a
manifest issued for the Chinese post office at Yathung in Tibet’s Chumbi
Valley is sent to the India Post’s Gangtok head office, from where the
sealed bag is collected by the Sherathang postman.”
“While the mail exchange on the Indian side of the border takes place
every Sunday, the exchange on the Chinese side takes place every
Thursday.”
An army officer says the volume of mail has decreased over the years and
at times, only an empty bag is exchanged. “But the process is never
stopped,” adds the officer.
In the age of e-mails, had it not been for the mail exchange, letters
would take months to reach their destination on both sides, says Laga
Tamang, Sherathang post office in-charge who also fills in for Bhim
Bahadur when he is indisposed.
“Come hail or snow, Bhim Bahadur trudges up the 7km stretch from the Sherathang to Nathula to exchange the mailbag,” he says.
Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com/
