Sumo-sized tribute to Buddhist murals
Nalanda by CMYK bookstore at The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel will soon be home to one of the most prized coffee-table books, we have seen in recent times — Thomas Laird's Murals of Tribute. Priced at a whopping R8.5 lakh, the collector's edition, which has been signed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is, as the title suggests, a tribute to Tibet's spectacular Buddhist murals.

What makes this collection unique is that Laird has deployed new multi-image digital photography, to compile a first-of-its-kind archive of these artworks, some as wide as 10 metres, in life-size resolution. For those who'd like to get their hands on Laird's landmark project (limited to 998 copies), the book comes with a bookstand designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban, and a scholarly companion book by Buddhist writer Robert Thurman, containing detailed text on the murals' spiritual significance.