In a display case, a tiny glass fly is seated besides another that is over hundred times its size and made from ivory in Japan. We are inside Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya’s (CSMVS) Special Exhibition Gallery, and curator Joyoti Roy points towards it and calls the exhibit an antithesis. "In fantastical literature, say, in Gulliver’s Travels or Thumbelina, where there are huge insects, you’ll notice that they become too scary to look at. It looks beautiful when shrunk," she says. The exhibit, coupled with Roy’s explanation, not only becomes the crux of CSMVS’ latest exhibition Small Matters: An exploration of miniaturisation, but it also validates their proposition of being idea-centric.

A Quran with a box, used as a taweez