I found myself at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 30th May, 2019. This museum was established in 1852and it is spread over an area of twelve and a half acres and has about 2.27million artifacts from around the world. It has 145 galleries that consist of artifacts from Rome, Greece, Italy, France, Medieval Europe, Islamic world and South Asia. Though I enjoyed looking at many art objects from Medieval Europe it was the South Asia section that attracted me a lot. For the first time I saw many miniatures from the Mughal Court and few from Deccan in the original. We only see copies of these in books when we teach and show them to our students. I could see gold jewelry of 18th cen India. I thought of my student Harish Srinivas a, who worked on Military history of 17th for M. Phil and 18th cen for his Ph. D when I saw a large number of 17th cen guns. They look so heavy that the soldiers carrying them need to be very muscular and healthy. Really some of the best artifacts from around the place in terms of beauty, grace and History are housed in this museum.
