Anupam Sah finds it telling that the need of the hour, for both humans and precious pieces of art, is conservation and prevention. Together with a critical team and security personnel, Sah, who is head conservator at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), has been living on site, watching over its invaluable collections. "We have something called the Risk Assessment Protocol that was implemented when we realised the health crisis was mounting. This was more was than a week before the national lockdown was announced. We had planned early, and that helped."

By mid-March, the museum's director Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who has his residence on the property, chaired a series of meetings to assess the situation and identify risk factors. The protocol began with securing the perimeters of the museum and identifying the staff that had agreed to live on site. The museum's galleries were given a clean-up, electrical units and climate control units checked. Ongoing restoration of the museum building was stopped in phases, and locks were changed in some sections of the building. A few priority items and artefacts were moved to the higher security area.