In an exhibition named Small Matters, currently on at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), the live diorama of five miniature trains has an interesting association. The working scale locomotive models, running on digital command, come from the personal collection of Pratik Aroskar, a 33-year-old visual artist who happens to be an exhibition associate of the Grade 1 Heritage Museum Building, which houses 60,000 multicultural artifacts from Asia and Europe. Aroskar has created a hilly tunneled landscape to generate popular interest in the railroad network that can engage children and adult viewers alike. The display is geared towards finding intricacies of minute scaled-down versions, which otherwise go unnoticed in gigantic real-life forms. In fact, the entire exhibition, curated by Joyoti Roy, of 377 odd objects—Golu dolls to plant figurines to kitchen-toy sets, along with depictions of community festivities—opens the expansive world of miniaturisation in Indian society, particularly in performing arts, worship and child play.This is the 28th exhibition Aroskar has illuminated since he joined CSMVS 10 years ago. He also teaches a module on light management in the post-graduate museology course being offered by the museum for the last three years.

Aroskar did not set out to be the light in-charge. After securing his degree in Fine Arts from JJ School of Arts (2008), he did sundry jobs in the film industry, one unlike the other. He worked as a tattoo artist in the Ketan Mehta-directed Rang Rasiya as well as the TV reality show Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega; he dabbled in 3D animation for a cartoon network channel; then illustrated book covers, designed outdoor hoardings/banners and handled exhibitions on a freelance basis. He didn't know that each sundry assignment would be a building block in his profile as a conservation assistant at CSMVS. The initial years at the museum included a variety of responsibilities that encouraged wider interests—starting from rudimentary cleaning of antiques to caption design to making of graphic panels to fashioning out exhibition invites.