COVER N. 490 - SRI LANKA

Postmark: Headquarters P. O. Colombo Mail 10.07.24

Posted on the 10th July; Received on the 17th July 2024

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Further to the postcards of the previous post, Ravindra also sent me a great cover with two quite interesting issues. Again, many thanks Ravindra! The number of Sri Lanka related posts on my blog is really growing fast... 😀

Guglielmo Marconi (1834-1937),  the man who made it possible for me to listen to Cecilia Bartoli saying good morning in Portuguese on the radio, every day, when I drove to work... 

In fact, the 7 o’clock program on the classical music station,  Antena 2, called Império dos Sentidos - The Empire of Senses - invariably started  - and I believe it still does - with a pre-taped spot featuring Portuguese Poet Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos saying a short (in size but gigantic in content) poem of his: Ama como a estrada começa (Love just like the road begins) - and  Cecilia, who was interviewed by the programme when she was in Portugal to sing at Fundação Gulbenkian - an unforgettable recital, which I was lucky enough to have attended -  saying good morning in Portuguese to the listeners of the Empire of the Senses)... 

This is the magic of radio... of all wireless transmission, the invention for which Marconi became famous: to let people be heard far, very far,  from where they are, to  carry  voices, news, information, culture, on electro-magnetic waves...

I was tempted t go on a train of thought about radio, but I'd be digressing. Still this is really a fascinating topic. Will radio ever disappear, in these days of alternate communication media concentrated in a small device which was first invented to make phone calls? I don't think so. At least for as long as we drive. The imageless quality of the message radio conveys makes it possible and legal to enjoy it while driving. In fact it can even sooth you when you are about to experiment apoplexy from being stuck in a traffic jam for a couple of hours...

But, yes, I'm digressing.

All this talk about radio was motivated by the souvenir sheet containing a single 50 rupee stamp with the effigy of Marconi on it, side by side with a photo of his first transmitter. 

The souvenir sheet, illustrated with a photo of a ticker-tape telegraph was issued by Sri Lanka Post on 29APR 2024, being evocative of 150th anniversary of the birth of the Italian inventor and Nobel Laureate of 1909, a distinction he shared with German inventor Karl Ferdinand Braun.

When I first looked at the sheet and saw both the Sri Lankan and the Italian flags, I thought I was in the presence of a  joint issue, but further investigation in the usual stamp catalogues on the internet did not confirm my supposition.

The same holds true with regard to the other souvenir sheet on the cover, comprising two 50 rupee stamps, evocative of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Sri Lanka and France.

Issued on 27OCT23, the stamps are  illustrated with images of the ancient city of Sigiriya  and Mont-Saint-Michel, both having in common the fact that they are perched atop natural ground elevations and that they both share UNESCO WHS status.

Diplomatic Relations between  France and Sri Lanka were established on 27 October 1948 and  75 years later, Emmanuel Macron became the first French President to visit the island state. 

As usual with Ravindra's mail, the Postmark hails from the central PO of Colombo.