During the Kerala Circle Conference of BSNL Employees Union at Kannur on 12-14 October 2011, I had the rare opportunity of meeting a lot of comrades who have worked with me earlier, many of them retired now. It was a pleasure to meet the old friends and comrades and chat about the past, present and future with them. Since I have been away from them for many years, I could see the changes in their appearances which one could not have realised if he was in constant touch with them. It may be the same for them with regard to me.
Among them, there were two very old comrades, who are brothers, who had influenced me much. They are Comrades Narayanan Master and Anandan Master, both retired as Postmasters. Narayanan Master has been one of the cause for my entering the Pand T Department resigning from the post of a teacher. I used to go to the Post Office at Mattanur where he was the Postmaster to receive the mails. He advised me to apply for the P and T jobs. At that time the applications were called for by the PMG, Madras for the posts of Postal clerks, Telephone Operators, RMS Sorters and Telegraphists. I applied for all the four cadres and was selected for all. I sought the advise of Narayanan Master which to select. He advised me that it is better to select Telephones, since there was much more opportunities. I selected the same and went to training and joined as Telephone operator at Kottayam on 02-09-1958.
Comrade Anandan Master, the younger brother, was working at Kannur when I got transferred to Kannur in 1959. Along with Comrades N.P.Padmanabhan, T.M.Janardhanan and P.Narayanan (Telephones), he was also in the leadership of the NFPTE there.Till 1964, I was at Kannur and got the opportunity to work with the above comrades, through whom I could get a lot of experience in union activities. Comrades Pappettan, Janu Master and Narayanettan are no more. But Comrade Anandattan is still with us. He came to the conference and attended for some time.
With both I discussed our old times, the experiences of the historic strike of 1960 and the present situation. All of us were happy.
I met daughter of Anandattan, who is also an activist of BSNLEU.
I visited the memorials of Pappettan and Janu Master in the Payyambalam beach and paid homage.