Speaking professionally, he had seen the working of the Indian Postal Service for ten years from close quarters. He knew well about the inefficiency of that system. In an article he wrote much later on 21 December 1996, in the wake of a nationwide strike of the postal employees, he mentioned; ‘I am ready to run the postal service by taking half the employees that we have and paying them half the salary they are getting. Today letters don’t reach their destination in any major city in less than five days. I guarantee the delivery in less than 24 hours. But such challenges don’t reach ears of the government and bureaucrats don’t feel the necessity to take their note. When servants become masters, this is the inevitable plight of the original owners.’ At a personal level, while the job, salary, service condition, prestige in society and all such things were fine, he was still feeling restless from within. Especially after the initial threefour years when the glamour of the high government post had waned. From childhood he had wanted to achieve something really great but in this job there did not seem to be even a remote possibility of that happening. Everything there had become a dull, mundane routine. Around 1964-65 itself he had wondered about resigning but somehow did not see a way ahead. During the seven months of training in Paris he began to get an inkling of something new. From one member of his batch he learnt that at the headquarters of UPU in Switzerland a new post was being created and figured that he might be suitable for that. Some officials of UPU he met had probably assured him that job. Those were the days before IT and overseas jobs were not very common. Moreover, to give up a secured high-level government job after ten years of service seemed almost suicidal. He also knew that if he resigned then he would get his provident fund and gratuity but would have to forgo pension. Entering the Professional World
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