#103 India...Thanks Sauj!

The left 5R stamp was issued in 2008 commemorating the canonization of St.Alphonsa.

Saint Alphonsa (19 August 1910 – 28 July 1946) is the second person of Indian origin to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church and the first canonized saint of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church of the Saint Thomas Christian community.

Alphonsamma, as she was locally known, was born in Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Palai.She had a poor, difficult childhood and experienced early loss and suffering. She joined the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, and through them completed schooling and made her permanent vows in 1936. She taught school for years but was plagued by illness.

Claims of her intervention began almost immediately upon her death, and often involved the children in the convent school where she had taught. However, she is not known to have involved in any acts of charity or philanthropy during her lifetime. The cause of Sister Alphonsa began on 2 December 1953 in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Palai and she was declared a Servant of God. She was declared Venerable on 9 July 1985 by Pope John Paul II. Her beatification was declared 8 February 1986 by Pope John Paul II at Kottayam.

Hundreds of miraculous cures are claimed for her intervention, many of them involving straightening of clubbed feet, possibly because of her having lived with deformed feet herself.

On Sunday, 12 October 2008, Pope Benedict XVI announced her canonization at a ceremony at St Peter's Square.

The 15R stamp was from 2002 UN Climate Change Convention showing Mangrove Apple ( Sonneratia Alba)

The other 5R stamp was issued in 2009 commemorating R.K.Narayan.

R.K.Narayan was an Indian author whose works of fiction include a series of books about people and their interactions in an imagined town in India. He is one of three leading figures of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. He is credited with bringing Indian literature in English to the rest of the world, and is regarded as one of India's greatest English language novelists.