Bundling camera after camera through security, the art and form in which we penetrate the museum would leave us foul, possibly incarcerated elsewhere, but here we are left alone to contemplate stone; and one seeking illumination. Set in stone, not far from Queen Victoria, Buddha starves. Eyes sunk in deathly-stare; posture erect; head is slightly titled. Ribs protrude; nothing could be further from regally adorned layers of fat that -sepulchre in hand- lurk around the corner. It is the hair, though, in Grecian knots, that gives the game away- of Gandharan extraction: from times when Buddha spread wide in these regions, and was touched by the stratagems of Alexander the Great and Greek artistry. ‘Superbly realistic’, hands cusped together, one sits in perfect lotus form; one seeking illumination through extinction but finds the Middle Way; finds in certain art and form, that to kill a man is to know him; an image is a flicker inside.

-KW, Lahore.

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