Anandavalli, Kerala’s first postwoman, passes away at 89

mangaloretoday.com

Alappuzha, Oct 03, 2022: It wasn’t a time when women took up jobs in the post office, riding a bicycle to deliver letters, money orders and telegrams. But in the late 1950s, a 20-something KR Anandavalli applied for and got the job of a postwoman in Kerala’s Alappuzha district. Despite some discouragement in her early days, she continued working, rising up the ranks in the postal department until her retirement in 1991 from the Muhamma office. She lived for three more decades, witnessing the changes in communication and the fading away of snail mail, before breathing her last on October 1, Sunday at the age of 89.

 

“We learnt that she was the first postwoman in Kerala when we were children, in a write-up in Mathrubhumi. But it was much later when as a photographer I began to associate with newspapers that I realised its significance. I began taking pictures of her with the old Raleigh cycle she used to ride to deliver mail,” says Dhanaraj, Anandavalli’s son.

The bicycle is still maintained by the family, though it is no longer used for riding. “My father used to ride it and then later I did. Now though, it is not used,” he says.
Anandavalli used to talk to her children about her days as a postwoman, Dhanaraj says, about how she had to sometimes deal with the big names of the time. “In those days, Muhamma post office did not have the telegram service. It was AKG (late Communist leader AK Gopalan) who made it happen in Muhamma, which was the native place of his wife Susheela Gopalan. When AKG’s instructions came, my mother would be the one taking it down. She’d tell us how nervous she was then,” Dhanaraj says.

Another story, reported by Kaumudy Channel, goes further back in time when Anandavalli was going to join the postal service. After listening to a few friends and relatives who discouraged her from taking on the job, Anandavalli went to the office with a resignation letter on her first day. The story goes that the office stenographer, who saw the letter, tore it to pieces, and that was the end of it.

But Anandavalli had the support of her father, KR Raghavan, an Ayurvedic practitioner. It was after completing her degree in commerce that she took up the postal job and began her bicycle trips around the village. The Raleigh cycle was a gift from her father.

Anandavalli’s first salary as a postwoman was Rs 97.50. She married VK Rajan, a Sanskrit teacher, and together they raised two children – Dhanaraj and his sister Ushakumari.

Courtesy: The News Minute