India, Bombay-Calcutta
An early "Greetings from" concept card, printed in Italy, possibly to market train service between Mumbai and Kolkata, rife with tropes that Europeans would have associated with India: a tiger (stalking the train?
Postcard
Simla View from the Cart Road
[Original caption] View from the Cart Road. Simla is in the mountainous region of the Punjab, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The town is beautifully laid out and the scenery is magnificent. [end]
Note the boy carrying wood in the foreground
A Group of the Maharaja's Elephants
One of the earliest Gobindram Oodeyram postcards, still "court-sized" from a period before the British postal service officially allowed for the larger European standard, two centimeters more in length (14 by 9 cm, though cards of this size
Parade Road, Belgaum
A very nicely coloured card, using side profiles of people, a commonly trope in albumen photography, to mark the scale of a scene. An open road extends across the whole foreground. The shadows fall softly on the right.
Table Boy
From an unusual lithographic series, a marvelous rendition of a type still very active throughout the subcontinent and restaurants abroad.
The Museum, Udaipur
A curious card, with the white space in the top corner intended for a written message by the sender before messages were allowed on the backs of postcard after 1905. The original Victoria Hall Museum, opened in 1890, has since moved to the City
Dalhousie Square, Calcutta
[Original caption] Dalhousie Square.
Bikaner Camel Corps, Delhi Coronation Durbar
Bremner made a whole series of postcards of the 1903 Delhi Durbar, and as with many photographers, it was the Camel Corps that caught his camera.
Postmarked "Meean Meer" [Mian Mir, Lahore Cantonment), Nov.
A Burmese Beauty
A skirt or longyis is topped by a loosely fitted long sleeve shirt and the lady wears two necklaces, one a choker and another a longer one.
Spearing Fish on the Dhal, Kashmir
The still and clear water of Dal Lake was ideal for catching fish using a spear instead of line, hook and bait. Most families living permanently on boats have small kitchens on board where the fresh catch from the lake is turned into flavored dishes.
