Ravi Panamanna - In Lingering Reflections

Indian Postal Service has produced umpteen mail runners like this during its evolutionary period and this poem is a dedication to all these unknown mailrunners who had enlivened our hamlets by doing a selfless couriership. Now, the last mailrunner has also withdrawn from the scene.

IN MEMORY OF THE MAIL RUNNER AYAMU. He was a mail runner who ran with a mailbag upon his shoulders for umpteen seasons to my hamlet Panamanna from a Sub Post office three miles away. Six miles a day he ran by beating the seasons. He ran in the same route for decades, silently carrying the cross upon his shoulders.

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The fields and waters of this hamlet,
The passing winds of yore,
Unto a fane*, face forgotten
Wait in deep reverence.

The knolls and those shady lanes,
The betony* the springs of yore hath seen
Unto a footstep, familiar but long lost
Wait in lingering reflection.

The bamboo grove within their windy reeds,
The limner* beholding the picturesque past
Unto a frame, torn by the gales of life
Wait for the return of the native.

This thorp, while in the cradle of soft winds,
While she slept among the hurricane lanterns,
Hath for long seasons seen this face,
Hath for decades slept well under his couriership.

He was a mail runner of my hamlet,
For long seasons the carrier of her hopes and dreams.
And unto the heart of her living spirit
He hath left a lay for her surging winds.
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Fane* - Sanctuary or a temple.
Betony*- A genus of plant
Limner*- A portrait in words.

Ravi Panamanna

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