This paper explores the various stories around measurement and calculation of distances of the roads in early colonial India. It focuses on the mathematical facets and statistical problems involved in the shift from ‘kos’ (Indian unit of measurement) to ‘mile’ and shows how the statistical tables and distance charts were produced by the surveyors and administrators. Often the time length of journey was converted into distance leaving some disturbing distance charts in which 6 ‘koses’ varied from 14 to 15 miles, 5 ‘koses’ from 13 to 15, and 7 ‘koses’ from 18 to 21 miles. Highlighting on a certain incident in the Postal Department, this paper would show how the colonial administrators dealt with such confusing and fluid statistics. Varieties of distance charts flowed into the Postal Department in which the same distance from one place to another differed even upto 40 miles sometime. But still there was a relentless attempt on the part of the colonial state to fix the distances, to finalize the charts, to produce the English unit ‘mile’ as static and standard. This paper would like to explore these early moments of adaptation of the measuring unit ‘mile’, how it replaced the earlier prevalent unit ‘kos’ and how its claim of authenticity and ‘scientificity’ succumbed to a drastic failure. The numbers engraved on the milestones were all fallacious, the statistical charts produced as ‘final’ in the Postal Department hardly showed any ‘correct’ distance. This paper would explore these series of discrepancies that stormed the postal system in India in the early 19th century. Partially agreeing or disagreeing with scholars like Ian Hacking, Theodore M. Porter, M. Norton Wise, I would try to trace the ways through which statistics and mathematics entered the realm of social science practices, how the payment charts of the dak bearers or postal carriers had essentially to be commensurate with the distance charts and how the obligation to fix the distance charts derived from that urgency. The fluid unit ‘mile’ could hardly address these problems though it survived until the metric system was introduced in India along with the arrival of the railways in mid 19th century. The history of roads therefore is closely related to the history of the measuring unit ‘mile’ and the mathematical problems embedded in it. This paper intends to look into the ambiguity and confusion around mathematical data from which the tentative notion of ‘exactness’ derived in India.