The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Mumbai’s last generation of letter writers signs out Posted: 26 Dec 2013 08:07 PM PST For decades he penned the missives of Mumbai's illiterate workers, whether lovers pledging devotion to faraway sweethearts or prostitutes sending home money while concealing their trade. Today, Ahmed is lucky if he gets to write an address. "Thousands of people used to come – we didn't have time to eat. But in the last seven years or so it's been going down," the scribe said at his weathered wooden desk, perched opposite the city's domed century-old General Post Office. "I will stay as long as I can," he added. "But I can't say how long that will be." There used to be 17 letter writers in this bustling corner of the city's south. Now there are eight, whose tasks are largely reduced to packing parcels and filling out forms. The men huddle by a disused stone fountain, also home to a mini Hindu temple and a feeding pen for a constant flurry of pigeons. A bamboo-propped blue tarpaulin keeps the birds from the writers' heads. On Ahmed's desk sit piles of muslin wrapping and an old tin of pens, next to a seal engraved with his initials and a wax candle to stamp his work. While the tools of his trade may have barely changed since he began 40 years ago – aged just 14 – the methods of communication have been transformed. The mobile phone revolution and the rise of instant bank transfers have left little desire for cumbersome dictation and "snail mail" – even though a quarter of Indians remain illiterate. "Now they have mobiles, people can talk in five minutes," said Ahmed, who regularly checked his own phone while discussing his job. "Without a mobile, you can't do anything." The father-of-five said he earns 200 to 400 rupees (RM10.63-RM21.25) a day – "enough to feed my family" – although a colleague at another desk bemoaned the ten rupees he had made all morning. While they talked, a pair of western backpackers approached the writers to parcel up their souvenirs. Older local customers sought help filling out money order forms. The scribes' latter-day clerical duties hardly match their earlier status as the primary conduits between city and village life. As Mumbai, the financial capital, sucked up rural Indians in droves, the new arrivals needed to send back hard-earned cash to their families – and selected versions of their news. "A lot of prostitutes used to come and never tell us what they were doing in Mumbai," Ahmed explained. "They just said they were doing a job here and getting this much salary." The writers' respect for privacy was therefore key to their success. "We had to keep secrets. If the customers didn't trust us, they wouldn't come. It's a matter of trust only," he said. Yet Ahmed would not shy away from a tweak or flourish to their prose – "for the sake of the person they were writing to". Sometimes the customer "didn't know what they were saying," he added, somewhat dismissively. In the era of instant messaging, Twitter and Facebook, letter writers are not the only vanishing messengers. In July, India halted the world's last major telegram operation, after 163 years of service. Once the main form of long-distance communication, 20 million messages were dispatched from India during the traumatic partition of the subcontinent in 1947. But since their jobs disappeared, several of Mumbai's telegram delivery men have become gatekeepers and clerks at their old office building – now home to a telephone and broadband provider. Such job switches look set to continue as digital technology strengthens its grip. More than 40% of India's 1.2 billion people own mobile phones, and just a fraction of them smartphones, yet the country has already overtaken Japan to become the world's third largest smartphone market. Internet penetration remains low, but grew by 31% from 2012 to 2013 – a pace second only to Brazil, according to digital research firm comScore. "My father also did this job, but it won't continue," said Ahmed of his letter writing trade. "Now business is not coming, why should I invite my son to do this? A lot of other jobs are there." - AFP, December 27, 2013. |
| Japan’s ‘Tree Town’ sculptors make living art Posted: 26 Dec 2013 02:31 PM PST The heir to a centuries-old family business, he creates masterpieces that can turn a pine tree into a work of art that could fetch $40,000 (RM131,900). "This tree is a woman – the leaves are soft," the arborist says of the pine into a triangle at his farm in the city of Sosa. "Trees are my family – they don't say what they want but they are sending messages about how they want to be shaped. "The feeling may be one-sided, but I believe that we share something with trees, just like living creatures." Sosa, a small city about 100 kilometres east of the Japanese capital, has long been known for supplying many of Tokyo's expertly manicured gardens and temple grounds with trees that seem like they were shaped by the wind or the weight of snow. That dramatic effect involves chiseling branches to twist and pull them into shape, while keeping the tree alive, a delicate technique called "nomiire". "Oh, it hurts? Sorry, I'll do it slowly," Tadayoshi Udono, an expert in the style, says to one tree as its branch squeaks under the pressure. Like many traditional crafts, the art of shaping so-called "macro bonsai" trees – cousins to the smaller and potted bonsai – has been facing tough times. Few among the younger generation are taking up the painstaking profession these days, and some who abandoned the trade as the economy turned sour in recent years. Yoichiro Sato, 38, has seen colleagues quit and jokes that he was "brainwashed" by relatives to work in a business that has been in his family for four generations. Sato sees challenges ahead, not least of which the fact that Japanese homeowners are increasingly turning to easy-to-care-for trees instead of those that require expert care. "So, I'm really grateful that people abroad are looking to Japanese garden trees," he says. Koichi Ebato, chairman of gardening firm Koshuen, agreed times are tough in the densely-populated country of 128 million. "In Japan, there is no space, and houses are not suited for Japanese gardens anymore. And the economy is bad. Nowadays most of my clients are Chinese," he says. Producers are banking on overseas demand. Japan exported about $82 million worth of trees, plants and miniature bonsai last year, up 22% from 2011. But it's a tricky kind of export. Trees and plants must meet importing countries' strict quarantine requirements. And they will spend weeks in refrigerated shipping containers without sunlight or water before reaching markets including China, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, France, and Britain. Buyers must have deep pockets, and patience. It can take a decade to complete a relatively small tree, while others are a century or more in the making. The 55-year-old Ishibashi, who started when he was 18, recalls his father scolding him for wearing gloves as a beginner. Gloves, he was told, make the hand less able to complete delicate snipping and trimming worthy of a surgeon. While Ishibashi has come a long way since then, the veteran still thinks he has only scratched the surface. "This job is profound – I won't learn everything before the end of my life." - AFP, December 27, 2013. |
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