Johnny Come Philately

If you are a philatelist who'd given up on Indian stamps, maybe you should drop into your musty neighbourhood post office one of these days. Check out the stamps with corals, sea shells, musical instruments, presidential bodyguards, the Panchatantra, Konkan Railway and the neem tree that make for some of the new ideas and themes. Printed in sophisticated shades of teal with saintly red haloes, on glossy and matte paper, flat or embossed, Indian stamps these days are looking good and flying fast.

Thumbnail to palm-sized: our stamps have turned funkier and classier. Gone are the coarse-papered, cracked-around-the-edges, badly-designed and largely boring stamps. Now, for everyday people, local and foreign receivers to collectors, the top right corner on envelopes is becoming India's smallest and most-riveting design hotspot. Check out the Gandhiji set (four stamps for Rs 27), a biographical pictorama that recreates the life of the Mahatma more evocatively than the old brown one-rupee bust of Gandhi we all used to buy. Or the gems and jewellery collection released last year that has sent diamonds, pearls and gold pasted on envelopes criss-crossing India from its nearest and farthest post offices. Even the Nizam of Hyderabad's emerald-studded sarpech has been put into people's hands at just three rupees. Or the colourful, definitive series on the Sunderban Tiger, Nilgiri Tahr and Saras Crane which have been printed in millions. Things are so good now you can almost hear the shahi bulbul, selling at Rs 25, warble with happiness.

And those who like living life less-perforated, using e-mail, sms, dhl and faxes to eschew the labours of buy-lick-stick-and-wait snail mail, seem to be missing out on the motifs. Listen to Cyrus Mehta, a retired Mumbai-based teacher: "I'd given up buying stamps completely till this year, when I got a letter with the 'Panchatantra, Monkey and the Crocodile' stamp. I fell for the colours and the devilish look in the crocodile's eye. Now I am a regular buyer at the Philatelic Counter." Or Radha Rani, a homemaker who has just spent Rs 75 at Delhi's Lodhi Road post office: "I love the wildlife series. I buy it for my son who is a nature lover." G.B. Pai, who calls himself the oldest lawyer in the Supreme Court and second president of the Philatelic Congress of India, says: "Gone are the boring old heads and busts. Today's stamps are better-produced and promoted." Pai knows this glued paper well with over 1,000 in collections and awards.

No wonder Devika Kumar, deputy director-general, philately, and her department have been minting more profit these days. Revenues, a paltry Rs 6 crore in '97, stacked up to Rs 38 crore last year. Helping them are the hiked postal rates. A letter weighing 10 gm costs Rs 5 to mail and speed-post beyond 1,000 km costs Rs 50 plus per 10 grams. And there's no guesstimating how much profit is earned from collectors who buy first day covers and mint stamps, where the department of post earns money on sales without the postman having to knock on doors.

To meet rising demand, the Philately Department is getting faster on the draw and bolder on design and empanelling private presses for printing. The once-dowdy department has received Rs 3 crore for promotion. Releases are steady at 50 issues per year; and 1,563 issues have been released since Independence. An issue includes upwards of two stamps. Even perforation has changed for security reasons, from the regular round to oval and star shapes.

Neatly dovetailing in-house talent with more communicative artwork, better paper and printing, the Raj Kapoor, Mahatma Gandhi and Salim Ali commemoratives (2001, 1998, 1997) have been sell-outs. Of the popular four-part 'Panchatantra' series, says Meera Handa, director, philately, "just before going to print, we changed the artwork on the 'tortoise and the geese' so that the movement of the flying geese could look more fluid." M.F. Husain, Jatin Das and A. Ramachandran are advisors on the design panel and the department boasts of 20 young designers working for it.

The results are showing. The Rs 4 Parliament of India stamp—they ask you to feel it—is embossed. The twin-stamp Rs 15 'Fifty Years of Diplomatic Relations between India and Japan', depicting the dramatic performing arts of Kathakali and Kabuki with their masks in the background, are rendered graphically. Says Kamleshwar Singh, the series creator: "Designs now are far more colourful. I start by hand drawing and then use Corel Draw and Photoshop for layout and shading." When asked what drew him to being a "modern miniature artist", Singh, who is working on a series on Nagpur as the City of Oranges, says when an ips (Indian Police Service) stamp designed by him was accepted, he knew he'd found a space to express himself.

All isn't hunky dory though. Collectors object to some of the strangers sliding under their doors. Says one senior collector: "Since 1999, the grandfathers of everyone in this government have had commemorative stamps—from Prabodhankar Thackeray, a stamp which caused a furore in Parliament, to Hedgewar, Devi Lal, Jijabai (Shivaji's mother) and institutions they believe in like the drdo."

True as this fact may be in the case of commemorative stamps, citizens are invited to propose people, ideas or themes on anything from bhangra to ballet to the Philatelic Advisory Committee (PAC), but no living people please. Philatelists, like undertakers, only honour the dead. But to be fair, the pac has approved proposals on people forgotten by history too: Jhalkari Bai, a village girl from Bundelkhand who fought as a soldier in the Rani of Jhansi's army, was commemorated in a stamp last year; and tribal warriors Sido and Kanho Murmo of Jharkhand, who led the Santhal Hul revolt against the British in 1855-57, were also honoured with a stamp based on woodcut.

Then there's lack of advance publicity. "Earlier they used to announce a release on Doordarshan and papers regularly. Not so now," says Delhi-based collector Ajay Kumar Mittal. Collector Savita Jhingan says: "When ads do appear they have ministers mugs, but what about a picture of the stamp?"

But trust the enthusiastic philatelists to spread the good word. Last week in Jaipur, 'E'-mail got a lumbering new meaning when Manchali, a decorated female elephant carrying her mahout and a mailbag full of 1,500 letters arrived, swaying gracefully at the Pink City's gpo. All letters carried by Manchali were specially postmarked for the ocassion as Elephant Mail, during the 7th annual Interschool Stamp Competition organised by the Philatelic Society of Rajasthan. And to commemorate Manchali's mail-carrying, a picture postcard of a bedecked silver elephant wearing Rajasthani kundan jewellery and a howdah on its back was released. Bought by many of Manchali's admirers at the exhibition, the postcard, needing a six-rupee stamp, unveiled many of the new, bold and beautiful stamps released lately.

People's purchases, at the same time, have also become most decisive. Says an official at a circle level post office in Delhi: "Ladies don't want to buy the gents stamps like Prabodhankar Thackeray and Ram Saran Sharma. They all ask for Sant Tukaram because he looks more holy. They all look at Nizam's jewels, but don't want to buy it. 'Such a big stamp for three rupees' they say, 'where will we write the address?'"

For feedback, the Department of Post introduced a stamp popularity contest in 1998. It could well be the biggest opinion poll in the country, with one lakh people voting at 900 philatelic bureaux. Mahatma Gandhi, the man of the millennium, won in '98. By '99, post-Kargil, it was the 'Pokhran Technology', and again last year 12,000 people selected the Param Vir Chakra series.From non-violence, nuclear blasts to martyrs, looks like Indian philatelists are getting hawkish.

What's next? Switzerland has released the chocosuisse, a scratch-'n-sniff aromatic chocolate confection, Thailand, a floral rose-perfumed stamp, and germ-phobic America has created no-lick stamps. What innovations can Indian mailers expect? Kumar laughs: "We can't afford productions like those on our budgets. But keep out an eye for our mangrove systems, Children's Day and Nagpur, City of Oranges."

The future, finally, looks vivid for the makers of the message on the envelope and stamp lovers alike.