Madras: Letter writing may be an art where imagination can take wings, but addressing the letters calls for care and precision. Otherwise, a letter meant for a girl with a secret dream could well find its way to the Returned Letter Office.Once known as the Dead Letter Office, it has been quietly doing its work right from the days Lord Clive introduced the “Official Postal System” in 1766.Of the 15 RLOs in the country, Calcutta is the oldest, but Madras is one of the busiest (receiving articles from both the Indian and Pacific Ocean nations). To this office, letters come at the rate of 156 a day. The Circle handles about 65 crores of letters annually.Over 80 persons in this office do a job which should strike a visitor as most amusing (and, of course, most useful). These dedicated men and women, divided into eight or nine linguistic sections give life to letters which must be deemed ‘dead’ for all purposes.Within 48 hours of the letters coming to the central table, where Mr. D. Sivaramiah, Manager, sits, they are distributed to the appropriate sections — English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These men and women, some by instinct and others by sheer experience, and all of them with a uncanny sixth sense, decipher the hieroglyphics and “revitalise” the lost letters. Most of them have come as being “undecipherable”, “unclaimed”, “refused”, or “left with insufficient address”. Published - July 16, 2026 03:20 am IST