India- as it always was

Location: Central Post Office, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India (34° 4' 60 N, 74° 49' 0 E)
Date: 18 August 2009 11.35am
Camera: Canon Ixus IZoom

India always amazes me in many ways. One of the most amazing things is how nothing ever- and I mean, really ever- change in this country. These post-boxes are really ancient- I suspect these are the same design and look when the country was under British colonization (India had been independent since 1947). The other amazing fact that this post-boxes illustrate is the confusion or perhaps more accurately, the ironic in the country's own existence as an independent sovereign nation. The country had struggled for over 200 years to rid itself from the yolk of suppression and humiliation of British colonization but yet it still cling on to all that is British- the symbol of the British Raj. One example is the short 3-foot bamboo stick, the lathi that most Indian policemen carry. I always remember seeing British officials in Bollywood movies of the colonial era customarily carrying one and using them on the locals. More comically, senior Indian police officers today also carry one of those short stick that were introduced and used by their British colonial counterparts.