By Sharanya Dutta
On 1st October, the UN released a postage stamp to honour Carnatic singer MS Subbulakshmi, to commemorate her birthday as well as the 50th anniversary of her performance in the UN.
A tweet from Syed Axbaruddin, India’s permanent representative to the UN, gives us a peek at the new stamp:
MS Subbulakshmi, born in 1916, was the first musician to ever be awarded the Bharat Ratna (in 1998), and the first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay award (in 1974). Aside from her widespread fame as a singer, she acted in films, risked sedition by singing nationalist songs at Congress rallies, and even played a male character in the film Savithri to raise funds to launch a nationalist magazine. (And who can forget that supercool photo of a young MS and her friend Balasaraswati in 1937 posing nonchalantly in pyjamas with cigarettes, no less?)
Given the number of exciting photos on MS, we wish the UN had chosen a warmer one that the photo in which an almost passive-looking MS looks into the distance.
But you know what? This is isn’t first time MS has featured on a postal stamp. In 2005, the Department of Posts released its own stamp on MS:
There’s no such thing as too much of MS.