wife serious come sharp

Often when riding by the Mymensingh Telegraph Office, I've slowed down to admire the old building and wonder what goes on inside these days.  So yesterday, I stopped in to ask.  The officer in charge appeared busy at work but graciously spared me some time.  I asked how many telegrams get sent these days, and he smiled:  few ... very few.  nai bole chole.

But some of the government banks do occasionally still send a telegraph, so the Telegraph Office stays open and ready for their monthly telegraph or two.  (Sent out by fax.)  And they also have the responsibility of distributing the land phone line monthly bills.  So the 8-10 employees keep their chakris and keep drawing their salaries.

It wasn't till I came back to the office and told my colleagues about my visit that I realized how recently this office still played an important role in the country.  As recently as 1994, Bari bhai had received a "wife serious come sharp" telegraph -- the one message from home that was supposed to earn you a immediate leave from work.

Mymensingh's Telegraph Office was built in 1856, and looked like it hadn't had any maintenance since independence.  Of the 8 rooms in the main building, only three are still in use, the others abandoned one by one as new leaks appeared in the roof.  But despite the disrepair, the structure has held up remarkably well.  It could probably survive another decade or two of neglect, but the officer in charge predicted it would soon be knocked down to make way for a large new building.  So the real question is: will the bureaucratic inertia be sufficient to keep the Telegraph service open and the building in place until there is a will to start restoring what little remains of Bangladesh's architectural history?