Next to car showroom, Chennai

One keeps reading of how the Indian postal system successfully delivers mail addressed to "Ram Lal, near peepul tree, some-godforsaken-village". Meanwhile, urban Indians keep complaining about how mail goes missing.

I've never had missing mail, but I have been miffed for a while that our weekly issue of Tehelka (to which we subscribed a few weeks ago) generally arrives a few days late. Today, too, we received a similarly delayed issue. But I took a closer look at the envelope.

The address was something like
Rahul Siddharthan
(Door number),
Next to Kun Hyundai,
Chennai-41.

That was it. No street name, no "part of town" -- just a door number, landmark and pincode. (Chennai-41 covers Thiruvanmiyur, Kottivakkam, Palavakkam, Neelangarai, and more, most of it -- including my house -- outside city limits). And my issue has been getting delivered without fail -- late, but not missing.

I'm impressed.

I'm pretty sure I included a proper address when subscribing, but have mailed them requesting an address correction. I should also mail my thanks to the postal department.