An Afternoon at the Museum: SA Museum Cover by Apurva Kohli

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Apurva Kohli standing in front of the Former
Prince of Wales Museum
As someone who has known Shriya Gautam almost all her life as well as one's own, a must do when one visits a new city is to ask Shriya where to go and what to explore.
The visit to this Museum was a result of one such inquisitive conversation with Shriya. She told me to visit the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, where I was headed in March 2016.

After we arrived at the Gateway of India from the trip to Elephanta Caves(more on that later!), I with two of my friends, Priyanka and Geetanjali went on in search of the Museum.
It was only when we reached a certain Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalya, when we realise that our destination was reached.Yes, this was the new name of Prince of Wales Museum.

It was already 4pm when we entered the Museum and came to know that it closes at 6pm. We only had a few hours to cover the huge place, so we quickly bought the tickets at a very nominal rate. One also gets a student's discount if you show your student identity card.

The Buddhapada from Gandhara,
also a part of the Museum Collections
The Museum Complex comprises of a huge building built in  Indo-Saracenic style, surrounded by a garden and flower beds.

The thing which caught my instant attention was a tree full of oxygen masks at the entrance of the building which represented the value of trees and monetary worth of oxygen produced by trees in comparison to that give by artificial means.

The museum is divided in 4 sections and after the security check we started our tour with my favourite Natural history section. It presented the art of taxidermy beautifully. The different bird species, mammals, reptiles, all caught our immense attention.

Pottery from Indus Valley, housed in
the Museum
Next was our visit to the archaeological section, where the artefacts of Indus Valley culture were displayed and along with them the sculptures from the Buddhist, Gupta, Chalukya eras were also on display.We skimmed through the third section of Art in a jiffy as we were getting late. This was home to the Indian miniature paintings of Mughal and Rajasthani schools among others.

At 5.30pm, we went for the half hour long audio- visual show which took us on a journey of history of Mumbai, from how the land developed from the British rule to Bombay to present day Mumbai. The video was entertaining and informative.
With this it was 6 and our One afternoon at the Museum ended with lots of memories and photographs for Shriya.




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