A runner from a bygone age

Thursday morning saw a man dressed in the uniform of old-school post office runners, kitted out with a spear and a lamp, on the streets of Dilkusha in Motijheel. Runners are immortalized in the history and culture of Bangladesh for their unwavering devotion to delivering the mail come hell or high water. Early 20th Century poet Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem “Runner” also helped glamourize the job for readers of Bengali poetry.But as mechanization and digitalization progressed, the significance of the post office, and runners by extension, diminished greatly. This runner’s emergence in Motijheel roused the curiosity of a lot of people, who became nostalgic for the times when people waited with anticipation for letters to be delivered. But for those unfamiliar with runners, it was an innovative, almost hipster-like concept.A little digging revealed that it was a campaign devised by Mark8 Communications for Green Delta Insurance Company Ltd to encourage writing letters, particularly in Bangla.