My footsteps echo as I walk down the large hallway of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Museum. At the end of the corridor, I am ushered into a room where I come face to face with the young Dr Jaffer - senior curator of the Asian department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

"My father was keen I study commerce so I could help and eventually take over the family business," he tells me between sips of tea. But an unrelenting passion for the past made him turn to his mother for support and after some thought she finally said the words that he so longed to hear, "ok…but don't tell your father till you graduate." That's exactly what he did. When the news finally did break, his father took it quite well, letting him pursue his Masters and a PhD in the history of art. Eventually he accepted a position with the V&A museum.

Dr Jaffer has spent most of his life between Rwanda, where he grew up and England, where he moved to study. Even so, he considers himself a true Indian at heart and feels a special connection with the land which his family originally came from, travelling back and forth several times in a year to lecture, study and touch base with other museums. Examining the room where we are seated, he pauses for a second and exclaims, "This is one of the most beautiful buildings." It is indeed and the curator's gallery is the perfect place to exhibit the small collection of royal portraits. "It's very interesting," he continues, "to see images like these that document Indian royalty, their travels to England, their fascination with western items, particularly luxury goods." Over the past few years, the historian has observed that the luxury market has been expanding at an amazing rate leaving him hopeful that such exhibitions will encourage people to buy beautiful things and to collect such memoirs of our past.