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on 071224 as i was going out i found two letter in my mail box. i had checked them even on sunday (accidentally) and i can assure you it was not there earlier. one of them was the telephone bill which bears the stamp of the delivering post office dated 17.12.07. the next is a letter from the british library which again bears the delivering post office stamp dated 21.12.07. that means the above two letters had taken seven days and three days respectively to travel from aramada post office to my house - a distance of 1500 meters!

am i surprised? not at all; here every thing that concerns me is under the control of the indian gestapo. the postal articles probably are delivered only after getting clearance from the indian gestapo. the gestapo is a busy person and so may be such minor things are kept for the week end. and once it is decided at leisure that i can receive a particular lette then and then only it is delivered to me - this time the first day following week.

secondly and more importantly, about a "speed"post letter! i had sent a letter to the principal medical college trivandrum by speed post with proof of delivery(POD) on 14.12.07 from the speed post center gpo thiruvananthapuram. the speed post charge is only rs.12/- for local letters. and i have paid an additional rs.11/- for the POD. but the pod never reached me till date that is 25.12.07.

obviously the gestapo must have decided that the above pod has to be "censored" and prevented the delivery - could be there was a terrorist plot there! you and i dont know; only the indian gestapo is purview to such classified information.

but i am a bloody fool and do not accept the gestapo. so i telephoned the manager of speed post center gpo on 21.12.07 from my home telephone. the gentleman promised to send me the proof and took my home address over and above the other details of the article.

but even on monday, that is the last postal working day, i did not get any information and during my jaunt to the city that day i met the gentleman in person. he looked up the computer and could find nothing and said i will have to wait for him to find out about the article.

this time i found him a changed man! . not only did he not keep the promise made on the phone of sending the pod in my home address, he was telling me that if i say that i have not got the POD they have to believe it. i asked him are you questioning my integrity and he fumbled. so rather than wait for another half an hour i walked off without saying good bye to him.

back home i tried the web site of the post office there is a system for tracking an article. i tried tracking the move and found that it was bagged to thuruvananthapuram medical college post office on 15.12.07. then i tried tracking delivery - this time there was no information and i was being asked to try later on. that was on 24.12.07 ten days after the letter was sent by "speed" post of the indian post office.

there is a provision for registering a complaint online at the web site of indiapost and i tried that one. at first the page wont come up and the reply was "server application unavailable". but later the page got displayed and i typed in the matter and clicked register. nothing happened and i could not get the complaint registered even after repeated efforts. how come?

the explanation is very simple. my net connection is going through the indian gestapo's proxy server and whenever the gestapo feels like the connection can be frozen. the problem is that once the complaint gets registered it has to be taken cognizance of. and the gestapo's pimps will have a problem in their hands. and so take the easiest way out.

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POSTSCRIPT
071228

the proof of delivery (POD) was delivered to me on 28.12.07, that is today along with some other postal articles. i am trying to put photographs of the pod on the net; have a look please. this pod is the original one ( it has my hand writing on it) and not a duplicate made after my representation to the manager spc gpo because the original was "lost in transit" !

there are two date stamps of aramada on the back of the pod one dated 19.12.07 and another dated 22.12.07 - that means the pod had reached the aramada post office that caters to my area on 19.12.07. so the pod was in safe "custody" with aramada post office since 19.12.07.

all post offices are supposed to make delivery of the articles on the same day or may be on the next day, if it arrived in the evening. then how come this article the pod was kept for the last so many ( almost ten) days withou delivering it?

again a couple of my letters were delivered to me on 24.12.07 and the post office stamp makes it clear that this pod was with them long before 24.12.07. if there was a snag they could have delivered it on 24th at least; no?

must be "security" reasons which only the indian gestapo knows; what do a fellow like me know about such great things!