Collecting stamps

I have a quality, which can be termed as irritating to people around me at times. I go in tangents from the topic of discussion, most of which are in no way related to the present one, often triggered off by a single word or a phrase. It happened again the other day, while I was reading about the plane crash in Yemen. It must have been to find out the route that the plane took to crash into the sea, but I remember looking at the map of the world. That triggered off an interesting thought on stamps and how rare the stamps from Yemen were. Well, I must admit the people around me were kind enough to continue with the discussion on stamps.

Nostalgia, as I would term it, it took me back to those days when I had four books of stamps, labelled and stacked neatly. Sorting them based on countries (India obviously being the one topping the list) and taking a weekly statistics of the number of stamps from each country and the total number of countries “owned” (although the rate at which this changed was rather low) was more like a full time job than a hobby, during those days. Back then, for every letter that was delivered home, our eyes were always on the stamps that it contained. And if it happened to have one which we did not own, the direct consequence was a fight between my brother and I to figure out who will take possession of it this time. Yet another day, we eargerly looked forward to, back then was when my father decided to open his collection of stamps, with plans to distribute some of his “wealth” among the two of us. This usually happened once in a month. He had some of the most exquisite collections that I had ever seen, and perhaps his was the best source for our budding collection.

I also remember how we carefully peeled out a stamp from the envelope. We left it in water for a few mintues to clear off the gum that held the two together. Now that in itself had a science behind it. We soon came to realise that the time taken for the stamp to completely detach itself from the envelope varied from country to country. . This process was usually followed by carefully drying the stamps in a “wind-less” environment and then ironing them to get them back to shape, once dry.

Gone are the days when stamp collection was a primary hobby among all school going children. I guess it died a natural death, going down with hand written letters. “Snail mails” as they are now affectionately called, have been completely taken over by the “e-mails” and messaging. Technology has defintely helped bring people closer, but what it took away from a child, were simple memories such as these which stayed on for a lifetime.