 At the turn of the 1930s, Paris, like every major metropolis of the industrial west, was still relishing the wealth of the past decade. Having successfully imported Henry Ford's factory line economy from America, the country had witnessed an unprecedented industrial boom which, in turn, had transformed the state into a generous patron of the arts and sciences. One of the greatest beneficiaries of the state's generosity was French archaeology. Throughout the 1920s, the increase in public money had allowed archaeologists to lead exoditions to north-west India and Afghanistan. When they returned home with sculptures that were neither fully European nor fully Indian in form, they exhibited them in the Musée Guimet, which became a hub of activity for amateurs of Greco-Buddhist art. Among the keen followers of these new, fascinating exhibits was one of France's most promising young authors, André Malreau. He had been visiting the Musée Guimet since he was a child, and the displays of its Asiatic arts section had left him fascinated each time. His father, who'd longed to visit Afghanistan, had recently committed suicide, holding in his dying hands a book on the Buddhist concept of the afterlife. So when Malreau set sail for India with his wife Clara in August of 1930, he was in part undertaking a pilgrimage in his dead father's name. Less than a month after their departure, the two had reached Beshawar. And when he finally reached Greco-Buddhist sites such as Bamiyan, Malreau was struck with asnishment. Larger-than-life figures of the Buddha were adorned with sculptures of Greek gods in a harmonious celebration of the divine. Malreau became mesmerized by the figure of Buddha himself and of his message on the illusion that is the human condition, on the illusion that is death itself. It was a message that was to haunt Malreau and draw him back to India over and over again. Malreau realized that everywhere here was a pious rapture contemplating the condition of man and all living beings, whose cycle of death and rebirth was their destiny, but not their fate. In 1961, the specter of death that had been overshadowing Malreau ever since childhood rose as never before. His two sons, Vincent and Gautier, aged only 18 and 20, died in a highway car accident. Despite his many musings on death, nothing had prepared him for this unexpected and brutal loss. The loss was compounded 18 months later by the separation from his wife Madeleine, who had been by his side for several years. Agitated, despondent and even suicidal according to some, Malreau longed for a break from his ministerial routine in Paris to give himself time to make sense of all that had been afflicting him. By coincidence, the University of Benares had decided that very year to confer upon Malreau an honorary doctorate, and Malreau sensed that this was the opportunity he had been seeking. Of the ephemeral nature of life and the futility of sorrow, he had heard much. Yet it was in this ancient city by India's holiest river, while staring into the very funeral pyres that reminded him of his lost sons that Malreau saw with his own eyes death being given homage as the highest form of detachment. In November 1974, Malreau returned to India in what was to be his fifth and final trip to the country. Invited to New Delhi to receive the Jawaharlal Nehru Prize for International Understanding, he nevertheless quickly moved down to Bombay, the port city he had first discovered with Rajaral in 1958. When Malreau came to India, he had just recovered from illness that had proved almost fatal. Indeed throughout the trip, perhaps overwhelmed by his own sense of mortality, he would grapple with how Indian art comes to terms with the end of this life and offers spiritual guidance to those accepting the finality of their own existence. When Malreau left India for the last time, on the 20th of November 1974, the son had well begun setting on his own life. Over a 50-year span, he had come here as an adventurer, a minister, a mourner and as a pilgrim, haunted each time by the grandness of its leaders, the beauty of its arts and the wealth of its cultural heritage.