Playing the Game in India
A humourous card from Moorli Dhur & Sons referring to gambling, a habit which many British soldiers in particular – at least from the postcard evidence – seem to have indulged in. The servant on the left is saying "Mrs.
Ambala
Rumi Darwaza [Gate]
![Rumi Darwaza [Gate]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/rumi-gate_0.jpg?itok=C5qqmJk9 "Rumi Darwaza [Gate]")
This 60 foot high gate, still very much in use, was built in the late 18th century by the rulers of Awadh as a copy of the Bab-e-Humayun in Istanbul.
Down in the Mouth
A faux pre-written postcard which gives some sense of the life at least as experienced by British soldiers in cantonments, even while holding ale in one hand and a pipe in the other: "Dear _____, I am feeling "down in the mouth." India does not agree
Indian Dancing Girl
One of the more elaborately framed and coloured portraits of a nautch girl.
Bearer
Although Hobson Jobson (1903, p. 77) defines Bearer as, besides a palanquin carrier, also as "b. (In the Bengal Presidency) a domestic servant who has charge of his master's clothes, household furniture, and (often) of his ready money.
Lawrence Military Asylum, Sanawar, Kasauli
Founded in 1847 by Sir Henry Lawrence, what is now the Lawrence School is a prestigious boarding school that serves much of the country's elite and the middle-class aspiring to join that elite.
State Entry, Coronation Darbar Delhi
The final of the great three Darbars in Delhi - 1897, 1903 and 1911 - was also the most "postcarded" of Darbars, with numerous publishers seeking to out do each other with series illustrating the spectacle. While H.A. Mirza & Sons in Delhi probably
Amphitheatre, Coronation Durbar, Delhi
A nicely framed view of the 1911 Durbar, with an Impressionist's blend of hats and heads, the first and only which a British monarch George V attended and was honored under an Oriental pavilion. It was the high noon of postcards too.
Meerut. Electric power house
A postcard celebrating an electric power plant, apparently in the cantonment area.
How We Make Love in the East
There are few intimations of relations between Europeans and Indians on postcards – or other media for that matter – making this postcard a startling exception. “Stay quiet about it,” says the sweeper in Hindu-Urdu. “Sure,” replies the soldier.
