For a beautiful postcard like this, we might reach for an excerpt by Nirad Chaudhri (1897-1999). Even if written about a different railway station, in East Bengal, it shows how impactful trains were to those in India at the turn of the century.
A striking portrait of an Indian shoemaker in France during World War I, who would have accompanied the 130,000 or so Indian troops who fought on the Western front during the first two years of the war.
A postcard which represents something of the uneasy relationships during the colonial period. The ancient banyan tree is hemmed in by fencing and benches. Two bearded British men are enjoying a drink under its shade.
The Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz (1914-1998) served as his country's Ambassador to India in the 1960s, and just before he died left behind a memoir of the country, In Light of India (1995) which has a beautiful description of Humayun's…
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the telegraph, introduced in 1840 to the Raj, as this grand edifice dedicated to the new medium and constructed in the 1870s suggests.
In the book Carl Hagenbeck's Empire of Entertainments by Eric Ames (2008) he describes the importance of this exotic showman and his family who helped turn "India" into a touring spectacle following an 1898 exhibition in Berlin, even if most of the…
Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, owes its name to the combination of two Tibetan words namely 'Kanchen' and 'Dzonga' that refers to 'Five Treasures of the Great Snow'. Five summits adorn Kanchenjunga (Kinchunjunga).
This ghat was one of the most common photographic and postcard images, and renamed in 2012 as Chotulal's Ghat. It apparently dates back to the 18th century.
