The Postage Explorer
About
A personal archive of Indian philately, digitised and published so it need not stay shut inside an album.
Calcutta
Stamps are living documents. A square inch of paper carries the time and the place of the story printed on its face.
Why this exists
Philately is one of the most resilient obsessions there is. Philately Life explores the history, culture and art of the world through its postage — old and new. The material here is drawn mostly from my own collection, digitised and published with its context intact.
I · The Collector
Two albums, three thousand stamps, and a small town
I am Purnendu — a photography and philately enthusiast based in Pune. As a nineties child I came into the hobby the way many do: an uncle passed down his old album, and another topped it up with a thousand of his own. Two albums, some three thousand stamps from all over, and a handful of first-day covers from the 1960s.
They were miniature works of art, and for a small-town child in the years before the internet they were a window on the world — stories from distant places, sometimes in languages I couldn’t read, that I could only visit in my imagination. In a way the stamps set the direction of everything after: they made me want to go and see the places for real.
The hobby went quiet in 2002, when I left home to study. The albums stayed behind and were very nearly forgotten. In 2020 I finally brought everything to Pune. Going through them again a couple of years later — for nostalgia, nothing more — the interest returned, and this time it didn’t stop at collecting.
I wanted a repository that anyone could read: not albums shut in a cupboard, but a collection online, catalogued and explained. Philately Life began in October 2023. It is a personal project with no commercial motive. I hope it’s useful to you — write to me if you have questions.
Purnendu Singh
Pune, India
Somewhere in Arunachal Pradesh
II · The Project
How it came about
- 1990sAn album handed downTwo uncles, two albums, three thousand stamps.
- 2002Left home to studyThe collection stays behind, and is nearly forgotten.
- 2020Everything moves to PuneThe albums are opened again, out of nostalgia.
- 2023Philately Life beginsOctober — the archive goes online, free to read.
III · What is Kept Here
Four kinds of paper
Postage
Definitives, commemoratives and overprints, arranged by reign and by issue.
Postal History
Covers and cancellations — the stamp doing the work it was printed for.
Postcards
India as it was pictured and posted — both sides, always.
Ephemera
Revenues, labels, receipts — the paper that travelled alongside.
Questions, corrections, or a stamp I ought to see?
This is a personal project and it improves when collectors write in. Compare notes, point out an error, or just say hello.