Miss Akhtara
A rare early Bollywood star postcard, though the movie the still is likely taken from, and the sad-looking star are unknown.
People
Ceylon. Road Near Colombo
[Original caption] Road near Colombo. This is the very fringe of Pettah or native quarter of Colombo. Coconut palms shade it from the hard blue sky and "the state o the sun"; the noise of brass-workers goes on incessantly under the bright red roofs.
The "Baboo" Cyclist.
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
Ceylon
A Singer Manufacturing Co. advertising card made in connection with the World Columbia Exhibition in 1893.
[Verso, Original caption] “There is a picturesque island in the Indian Ocean, separated from Peninsular India by the Gulf of Manaar.
Postman, Mysore, British India
A small advertising card for Chocolat Antoine, a chocolate firm in Brussels, Belgium, celebrating the far reach of the postal services – the uniformed deliverer, stamp and village woman watching in muted awe.
Mr. D. E. Wacha
President, 17th Congress, Calcutta 1901
Celebrating one of the many Parsee businessmen who supported the Independence struggle and founded the Indian National Congress Party.
The Bhistie
A contemporary artist's rendering of one of the most popular postcard subjects, the all important "bhistie" who brought water in an animal skin to the thirsty.
The Bazaar, Delhi
A hand-coloured postcard of Delhi by one of the earliest London-based publishers of Indian postcards.
The Bazaar, Leh
Probably one of the earliest if not the earliest postcard of Leh, capital of the former Kingdom of Ladakh. Little is known about R. E. Shorter, a photographer with offices in Sialkot, Punjab, on the route to Kashmir, and Kashmir.
Rabindranath Tagore
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
No sign of my
