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A nicely-framed postcard with the jali [or jaali, a stone carved lattice screen] dominating the image.

One can see the rapid transformation of the postcard from a time when messages where only allowed on the front, as in this card.

Knife grinders are a vanishing craft. Doing this at home before electric knife sharpeners was difficult. Knife grinders would take their sharpening wheels from door to door and take care of the problem.

A lithographic portrait, which by this time had become a lesser used printing process for postcards.

A beautifully colored lithographic postcard, with two stamps carefully positioned on the front and postmarked 26th November 1919.

One of the many – to Indians, curious – new professions that sprouted in the growing city of Bombay at the turn of the century.

There are very few Dutch postcards, let alone early ones, of India, but this is a splendid exception.

A lovely character sketch by the artist M.V. Dhurandhar of a carriage driver in turn of the century Bombay.

A satirical postcard showing a "Baboo," which Hobson-Jobson defined as used in Kolkata "with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali," pulling ahead on the most modern of…

A portrait of Tagore published three years after his death. In Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson's excellent biography of this great man (Bloomsbury, 1995), there appears this translation of this poignant poem:

Karma (The Worker), 1896