Like 'seal' always brought two pictures to my mind, the arctic mammal and the wax-stick I used to play with, the word 'stamp' recalls the postage and the rubber things.
First the postage stamp.
There indeed was a time when our postage stamps had impeccable tear holes as well as self-adhesive glue behind them. When the clerk behind the counter tore a one-rupee stamp for you from his broadsheet, the result was one whole stamp with lovely sharp semicircular edges. All you had to do then was to lap up the behind of the stamp with your tongue and stick it to your envelope which too had flaps with glue that tasted rummy. The PJ among us Research Scholars was that, when the schol expires before the thesis transpires, all you have to do is to go stand at the Post Office and bend with your tongue lashed out for your Professors to use your back as a desk for closing and sealing their envelopes and writing the addresses, and your dripping tongue as the wetter for their stamps.
Nowadays you know that our Postal Department is in the Savings Mode and you have to either carry a messy glue stick in your pocket all the time or be prepared to fight for that unbreakable bottle with semi-dried tree-gum and a straw sticking out at a rakish angle and is held tight by a hangman's rope tied to its neck and hidden behind the counter's pigeonhole. No wonder we are aspiring to become a world-power by federal lickstipping.
Anyway, I have observed that the stronger the economy of a country the lousier are its postage stamps. Take the US...no country ever had drabber stamps...same with UK. Some of the most delectable stamps are from countries I never heard of earlier like South Pacific Island States with dreamy names...perhaps they invest in stamps as a bait for tourists.
I thought all the while that getting a sheet of postage stamps released with your father's picture and his DoB and DoD and his sundry messages printed on it is the summum bonum of all his posthumous achievements and your filial piety. But I am told that nowadays you can get it done for a song if the song is loud enough. All you have to do is to get hold of a babu or two in the right places who can convince the minister that your dad was jailed only for federally approved reasons. And of course you have to buy a wad of stamps. Same with First Day Covers.
Now for the rubber stamps.
There was a time when your dad had to buy a violet-ink bottle along with the stamp-pad and ask you every once in a while to pour some ink on the pad that declined to lap it up dry and stayed as wet as the back of a puppy that lost her balance and fell into a shit-tank.
By and by we had 'self-inking' stamp pads that did need inking but soaked up the ink like the back of a jellyfish dropped on hot sand.
And now we have the true-blue revolution in technology: you don't need to buy a stamp-pad anymore...the male-part with the handle and the message releases the needed blot of ink every time you press (your suit)...good enough for, say, a couple of hundred dabs...who wants more?
I never understood what is so holy about rubber stamps. Whenever our HoD signed my application for a PF Loan, he would ask me to go to his Office and get it stamped beneath his holy signature. And Didi would do the needful iff she is happy with you. The stamp had the usual message: HoD of the Dept of Phys and Meteoro. But RSS once took me to a shabby cubbyhole in Gole Bazaar where you could get any rubber stamp with any message made for as low as Rupees Twenty...so what was all that holy ritual about?
I have myself got a couple of rubber stamps made.
One, with the message: "Donated by Professor S Datta Majumdar"
See: http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/06/books-stagnant-brooks.html
The other with the message: "For Private Circulation"
See: http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/04/printer-devil.html
As my son is fond of saying like when he goofs up and tries to cover his butts:
No Big Deal!
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