Dr M R Ramesh Kumar
Goan Connect:
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Libia Lobo
Voice of Freedom was an underground that transmitted across Portuguese Goa from 1955 to 1961, advocating the cause of the Goan Independence Movement. The station broadcast a variety of programming in English, Konkani, and in Portuguese, promoting Goan independence from Portuguese rule. Some of the broadcasters on the station included activists Libia Lobo and Vaman Sardesai. During the struggle for Liberation of Goa, secret underground radio broadcasts were made under the identity ‘Voice of Freedom’. The Radio was operated continuously, from November 1955 till December, 1961 by late Vaman Sardesai and Libia Lobo Sardesai.
Lata Mangeshkar
Lata Mangeshkar was an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer. She is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential singers of the Indian Subcontinent. Her voice was one of the unifying elements of the people of South Asia across borders. Her contribution to the Indian music industry in a career spanning eight decades gained her honorific titles such as the ‘Queen of Melody’, ‘Nightingale of India’, and ‘Voice of the Millennium’.
She recorded songs in over thirty-six Indian languages and a few foreign languages, though primarily in Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. She received several accolades and honours throughout her career. In 1989, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award was bestowed on her by the Government of India. In 2001, in recognition of her contributions to the nation, she was awarded the Bharat Ratna, becoming only the second singer to receive India’s highest civilian honour. In 2007, France made her an Officer of the National Order of the Legion, the country’s highest civilian award.
Bhakti Kulkarni
Bhakti Kulkarni is an Indian chess player. She received the FIDE titles of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) in 2012 and International Master (IM) in 2019. She is the recipient of Arjuna Award for her contribution to chess. In 2011, she won the Asian Junior Chess Championship. In 2013, she was the first at the international women’s chess tournament in Czech Republic — Open Vysočina. In 2016, she won the Asian Chess Championship. A Picture Postcard on her was released by the Chief Postmaster General, Maharashtra Circle, on International Youth Day 2022 under the title ‘Saluting the Youth Icons of Maharashtra and Goa’.
Shweta Gaonkar
Shweta Gaonkar was trying to crack her engineering exam but there was a faint voice in her head that urged her to walk on the road less traveled – a BA in Agriculture. Currently working as a farm manager at a private farm, she is making waves as perhaps the only woman toddy tapper in Goa. After her graduation from the Don Bosco College of Agriculture, she took up tissue culture research at Bengaluru, wherein she was studying how to multiply millions of coconut seedlings from a single seed. However, the pandemic-induced lockdown compelled her to leave her research behind and return to Goa and take up a job there. One day, while making the farm, she started climbing a coconut tree and figured that she’s not afraid to go higher. Using a coconut climber device sourced from Kerala, she not only plucks the coconuts at the farm but also trains farm workers in this slowly dying art. She has, so far, trained a total of 60 farm workers in toddy tapping.
Noted Indian women featured in philately:
Mirabai
Annie Besant
Kasturba Gandhi
Sarojini Naidu
Sister Nivedita
Kittur Rani Chennamma
Rani Lakshmi Bai
Rani Abbakka Devi
Rani Abbakka Chowta
Kamala Nehru
Durgabai Deshmukh
Indira Gandhi
Vijayalakshmi Pandit
Savitri Bai Phule
The women in Indian cinema:
Devika Rani
Kanan Devi
Leela Naidu
Meena Kumari
Nutan
Savitri
(Dr M R Ramesh Kumar is the former President of the Goa Philately and Numismatics Society.)
