Thinking of you, dear print media, women, newspaper boys ...

Tuesday, December 3 was my first daughter's birthday, and what better occasion to reflect on women, life and how times have changed. And you know traditional media is never far away in my reminiscences.

What if my daughter had been born a hundred years ago? Well, 1913 was a good year for a girl to be born in Kottayam district, Kerala. Three women, PA Aely, VT Chachi, and KK Anna, were admitted to the Church Missionary Society College, Kottayam that year. Never mind the fact that women could get admission only after nearly a century since Benjamin Bailey founded the college in 1817.

The Malayala Manorama edition of Dec 3, 1913 has this interesting news on technology affecting life that year, titled 'Postal service through motor transport'.

The news item goes thus: Postal packages for delivery to places up to Nagercoil in the south and up to Kottayam in the north from Thiruvananthapuram will be sent via motor transport, and therefore 'mail runners' and mail overseers in these areas are being made redundant, it is learnt.

A hundred years down the line, it is the 'newspaper runners' of Kottayam district and in the rest of Kerala who may be getting that redundancy feeling. In parts of Washington DC, home delivery of newspapers ended some time in 2008, but in some parts of my village, Koovappally, including my home, doorstep delivery of newspapers ended some time in 2005.

I wonder if Washington Post's new owner Jeff Bezos will devise techniques to home deliver newspapers using drones, as he demonstrated this week delivering books. If he does, manual labour-starved Kerala and Kottayam in particular will be promising markets.

Meanwhile, a century after Aely, Chachi and Anna graced its campus, the CMS college teems with women students, presumably armed with smartphones and hardly anxious about the morning newspaper drop at home, while my own daughter is into her second month of work life with a software major in Mysore.

All good things must come to an end, and it must apply -- sadly -- to 'mail runners' and 'newspaper runners' as well. How lovely it was to catch the sight of the fleet-footed newspaper boy going about his job on misty mornings in the verdant environs of my village! If you are still blessed with that delightful sight, enjoy it to the full.

Alas, I can only reminisce the memories of newspaper boys (haven't seen any girls on the newspaper errand in my village) as gadgets grab eyeballs and drones whirr overhead.

Thankful to God that I can do these musings sitting under a nutmeg tree. These trees are known to last a few centuries, and not die out as quickly as print media or physical mail do.

Joe A Scaria
December 5, 2013