Sandesha - Museum of Communication

Gone are the days when we would send inland letters or post cards to our near and dear ones. This is that era when there were no phones to talk to our loved ones. Post was the only means of communication back then. I am sure people from Gen X, Boomers and some percentage from Gen Y will relate to me on this. But Gen Z also need to know how communication has evolved since ages.

So in this blog, I take all my readers to Sandesha – Museum of Communication in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.  

We took a metro and got down at M.G.Road Metro station. From here the museum is located on Museum road and its walkable. We followed google map directions, walked along the nice pavements of Church street and finally reached museum at around 10:30 AM. Please note there is no entry fee here. 

Sandesha in Kannada means message and hence this is the apt name for this museum. This museum is completely dedicated to the journey of communication in India. While the security guard went inside to call the guide/spoc, we were excited seeing the exhibits outside the museum.

Then the guard asked us to go inside, and a charming lady Divya welcomed us here. She was super excited to give us a tour of the museum. The entire museum is split across 5 rooms and each room has one unique name given – Sangraha, Sangati, Samwahana, Samputa, Samparka, Sandesha. In fact these are all various synonyms of communication. 

Sangraha

Sangraha means collection. So this room has a vast collection of stamps and envelopes. You will find stamps grouped under various categories – flowers, animals, birds, masks, politicians, Olympics,  India's freedom fighters, Gandhi's Dandi march etc. Indian Postal department has not left any category or person or any important event of India or across the world in commemorating them and accordingly the stamps were released in appropriate years.

I have picked some of the best ones here for my blog. But you must visit the museum if you are really interested to know how communication evolved across ages. To view each stamp on each exhibit in this room itself took an hour for us. 

One of the oldest means of communication

This reminded me of the DD commercial we used to love watching in childhood

This was so nostalgic. I have been to this place - World's highest post office in Hikkim and even sent a post card to me which reached me in 2 weeks of time. 

Wackiest letterboxes...I found these too interesting and creative

Once you complete visiting each frame, there is a feedback system which is the only digital device in this museum I could see today. Here you can take a quiz which will test your memory of the stamps that are on display and you can give feedback as well. I did try my luck but scored 8/10 ☹.

In this room you will also find devices such as Philascop which is a postage stamp viewer that magnifies the stamp and Signascope which was used to detect fraud in stamps.  

Sangati

In this room, you will find uniforms of post masters and the evolution of postmaster uniform. You will also find brass hammers, brass weights and unclaimed brass items returned to post office.

There was a colorful display of the post bags also where in each color had a significance. For example – Yellow colored bag used to take greeting cards. I won’t reveal the importance of other cards. You need to visit museum for that😊

Samwahana

In this room you will find a unit which was engaged for money order transmission. They would make use of satellite communications technology.

Samputa

Samputa means storage. This room has a repository of the unique parcel boxes.

Samparka

This room has various communication instruments like weighing scale, typewriter, telephones and many more.

Shri Victor Dhanraj received Meghadoot award for being India's best postman in 1988

This is Shri Victor Dhanaraj's uniform which he as donated to the museum

Sandesha

This room has various philately frames – Mysuru Anche, Birth of the Nation, Panchatantra, Indian art and architecture and many more. Very interesting to read the stories under each theme. There is also a projector here where in they will show a movie about the evolution of stamps especially for people of Generation Z.

This stamp would have the sandalwood fragrance

One can easily spend 1-2 hours here watching each exhibit and the unique stamp collections. Kudos to Indian Postal Department for a fantabulous job done in displaying every element involved in the postal system and organizing them as per themes. Must visit for all age groups especially for Museum and history lovers.