Releasing the postal stamp on Yuri Gagarin at Russian Cultural Centre.

Deputy Speaker N Sakthan releasing the postal stamp on Yuri Gagarin at Russian Cultural Centre.

As Vostok I re-entered the earth’s orbit, the first human to visit space whistled the tune ‘Rodina slysheet, Rodina znaet’ (The motherland hears, the motherland knows), a Russian patriotic song from the 1950s. The April 12, 1961, Vostok flight gave Soviet Union the upper hand in the space race overnight. If the man who whistled that tune, Yuri Gagarin, were alive, he would have turned 80 on Sunday.
 Gagarin’s birth anniversary was celebrated at the Russian Cultural Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, which recently installed a bust of the cosmonaut. To mark the anniversary, the centre, in association with the Postal Department, also brought out a stamp on Gagarin under the ‘My Stamp’ personalised stamp scheme.
 Deputy Speaker N Sakthan, who inaugurated the function and released the stamp, said that Gagarin’s space flight was a milestone. ‘’Today the lives of common people are directly influenced by the development of space science,’’ he said.
 Russia was the first country to send an animal - ‘Laika’ the dog - to space. The first human being and the first woman cosmonaut - Valentina Tereshkova - also were sent to the space by Russia.
 The first Indian cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma was able to visit space thanks to the cooperation between Russia and India. ‘’This cooperation in the field of space technology is a model for the entire world,’ Sakthan said.
 Former VSSC deputy director and a trained astronaut P Radhakrishnan accepted the stamp on Gagarin from the Deputy Speaker.
 Rear Admiral Julius Zacharias, managing director, BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Ltd, delivered the keynote address. Honorary consul of  Russia in Thiruvananthapuram Ratheesh C Nair presided over the function.