The last of an era

This came to me from a friend Jocelyn, who spent time in Bombay. We caught up there during my travels. It came to her from a fellow named Scott Steinberg. I don't know him or his story. All I know is that there are things that are disappearing that I care far more about than the newspaper industry. I spent time in Calcutta, and saw the letter writers, the picture is mine, but the memory is from Scott:

From Calcutta

Hardly anyone anymore comes to see Saresh Mahato, one of the last letter writers of Calcutta.

"No more letters," he said after I asked him to write me one. "Stamps ... and insurance."

Then he pretended to ignore me, staring at items on his makeshift table set up in front of the General Post Office, a chalk-white architectural curiosity on the western side of Dalhousie Square.

About a year and a half ago, I had read an article in the New York Times about the professional scribes outside the main Mumbai post office who pen letters for illiterates: prostitutes, migrants, coolies, and other hardscrabble types in need of a skilled hand to send a dispatch home -- or worse, official correspondence to civil servants or bill collectors.

It's just one of several business being swept aside in the name of progress and convenience. In India, there are almost 400 million cell phone users. If you don't have a phone, your friend does. No need to take the time to dictate your worldly problems to a letter writer, and then shell out 20 rupees for the service. If an official letter is required, the whiz kids at the Internet cafes will whip one up for a good price.

I didn't have the chance to look for the letter writers in Mumbai four and a half months ago. When Jennifer and I arrived in Calcutta, I made a point to attend to unfinished business.

"You write better," said Saresh, a handsome man in his late 40s who grew up in the much-maligned state of Bihar.

"But I can't write this letter," I said.

Saresh and I went back and forth. Please. No. Please. No. And then something broke, the way it can only India -- the feeling of a billion people against, suddenly for.

"One page?" he asked, reluctantly offering up a blank sheet.

"One page."

"To?"

"My step-father, Fred."

"What is step? Father is father."

We were getting somewhere.

I told Saresh what I wanted: a letter to Fred explaining that I think about him often as slips deeper into Parkinson's Disease. I wanted more than a postcard -- something with rough edges, gleaming with truth.

"From the heart," he said. "You should have done one thing -- come in the evening when there's no traffic. Then I can think."

There is always traffic in Calcutta.

But he started. In the first paragraph his cursive loops were tight and the line slants were sharp, belying his nervousness. He was out of practice. He took long pauses between sentences; when he wrote, he didn't stray from my dictation.

We pushed on. Customers came up wanting to buy and sell stamps. Saresh ignored them. A naked man, with the skeleton of a small dinosaur, was fifty feet behind us dying a slow death -- his penis hanging in his beggar's cup. The heat pressed on the pollution, which pressed on our lungs.

In the letter, Saresh introduced himself to Fred, explaining that his industry was at least as old as the post office itself -- 140 years and counting. He said he was writing the letter, probably one of the last he would ever draft, for fifty rupees, or one dollar.

Half-way through the letter we crossed the street for a break. Three rupees each got us milky, smoky masala tea served in clay cups. He paid. When we finished the tea, we smashed the cups on the ground, as we should.

"You are my most interesting customer in twenty years," he said.

I took the hyperbolic compliment as his way of saying, "I like you." He already knew I liked him.

My letter was now our letter. Saresh picked up his pen and told the story of the journey that Jennifer and I were completing. He spoke of India -- the speed of some things, the inertia of others. He described the fine line between good health and bad. He wrote with more confidence, taking the liberty to stray from what I told him, as he should.

We came to the end of the page.

"Do you want me to write more?" he asked.

Of course I did. All day, through the night, into the summer. I hated to leave, to let go of this, to have to cap four and a half months. But it was time, the moment for the sincerest of sincerelys.

Despite some poor grammar, his last letter -- unlike this one -- was perfect. But it contained one lie: I didn't pay him 50 rupees. Though he has three kids at home and an ailing mother in Bihar, Saresh refused to take my money. I pushed, but not too hard.

When a man hangs up his pen, he should be able to do so with dignity.