Nobody gives a postage stamp

Back in 1990 Kashmir, the birthplace of superlative sweaters, rebelled against Indian rule.

The Indian state took it badly and there were scenes of desperation, violence, bloodshed and general mayhem. The postal service stopped. For seven months. This struck the good people of Kashmir as something of a crisis.

One of their most lauded poets, Agha Shahid Ali (the US claims him too), dedicated an entire book of very fine poems to this dreadful hiatus in the postal service. The sad tome is called The Country Without a Post Office. He was compelled to write the poem after which the book is titled when he heard the story of a friend of his father who watched the mail accumulate in undelivered piles at the post office across the street from his home. One day, when he could no longer bear it, he walked over and into the defunct repository of correspondence and picked up a letter at the top of a pile. As fate would have it, it was addressed to him. It was from Shahid Ali's father.

I've noticed an absence of poetic sentiment in South Africa lately. Nobody is writing elegies to the South African Post Office. Not even as a metaphor for the greater malaise of the state. If anyone has witnessed the miserable institution's whimpers as it lies dying in the corner, they are not talking about it. Not even a simple doggerel. Our post office should feel hard done by.

We are a Country Without a Post Office (I feel compelled to capitalise that statement) and, apart from the publishers of various periodicals whose businesses are at stake, nobody gives a postage stamp.

It took a murderous civil rampage to bring the Kashmiri postal service to its knees. Here, I fear, it is just plain indifference.

I don't even know what has shuttered the doors of this venerable institution. I hear rumblings about disaffected civil servants and their grinding three-month salary negotiations. But has anyone actually missed the service? Not me. I for one am pleased that the daily notifications from that other white elephant no longer reach me. "What e-toll bills?"

The Joburg Metro is more inventive than the gantry folk. The metro has taken an old-school approach to the problem of long-distance communication. After Eskom sent out the recent smoke signal the metro took to the road. Like Luther it is now nailing its own communiqués, read ultimatums, to my gate.

I don't know how I feel about this policy: replacing the postman with a hapless metro electrician. Here he comes armed with notices and clipping shears. It seems a cruel fate - a demotion of sorts. At least the postman had a modicum of pride and a capacity for ringing twice. The electricity department comes to claim unpaid bills it cannot send for services it cannot render.

I'm sure there is a poem in that.

• Karras is editor of Marie Claire magazine