Museum objects are time machines. They allow us a peek into a civilisation long past or bring us close to today's issues. Mumbai: A City through Objects tells the story of a city through unique objects in the collection of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the erstwhile Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay. The city and the Museum developed together, each inflecting the other's evolution. Like all great global cities, Mumbai has an extraordinary history which many writers have explored. No one has, however, interpreted the city through its artefacts, and the objects that were produced by its many craftsmen, which bespeak the efforts of the many ordinary people who participated as much as its great heroes in its making.