Once there was a time when people would send pigeons tied to letters in search of their loved ones hoping the returning bird may do the wingless a favor and deliver their message while he raptured in the emotions of homecoming. A more pedantic and official way of sending letters especially for kingly urgency was through envoys and messengers. The differing histories here have given largely differing perception towards the two professions/species. The pigeons are symbols of peace, diplomats have few true friends and messengers- well…they are just busy not getting killed.
I today had the experience of sending a letter through a postal service which is unfortunate- because postal services today operate in a manner similar to how the arrow-messengers operated some centuries ago. They bear no emotional attachment towards your mail and they want you to follow the procedures as strictly as they do- by which I mean: The ‘from’ address should be on the left of your envelop and ‘to’ on the right. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of the post office people they have come to develop. Who cares what if you wrote ‘to’ and from’ in bold on top of each sections of address. “If you write it the other way, the letter will return back to your address”, informed the gentle post office attendant scratching my addresses on the official-looking brown envelop on which I had cello-taped the addresses meticulously. I am thankful for his kind noticing of my mistake though because no matter how much sultry that Bhubaneswar afternoon was, I sincerely believe that if he hadn’t redressed my blunder the letter would have showed up on my door one fine morning.
Maybe one day when they perfect the technology for teleportation, they would bring the pigeons back in the game. That would give the technology enthusiasts like me who like a bit of non-professionalism in the way things are done.