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Brown History · Jun 30, 2026

How Spirits Protect The Trees Across South Asia

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Brown History · Brown History

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In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on the product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single color background. They conveyed a sense of power and safety – basically, what travellers were supposed to feel boarding liners and trains and visiting new destinations. (Available as print)

El Nino had arrived and temperatures were climbing everywhere. Humans, animals, birds, and insects alike searched for shade from the relentless heat, but shade was becoming harder to find. Across the landscape, trees had been sacrificed to greed and extraction, leaving the land exposed to the sun.

It was during this time, while travelling through the riverine belt of the Indus near Thatta, that Muhammad Hassan Bhail, a farmer and resident of Khalifa village, told me something that made me stop.

“There is a tree,” he said, “centuries old, protected by spirits. No one dares to cut it.”

Curious, I asked him to take me there.

Read the original on brownhistory.substack.com

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