Proffessor Werner Menski of South Asian Laws SOAS,University of London It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to contribute a Prologue to this attractive photo essay covering the professional and personal life of one of India's major judicial figures at the turn of the 21st century, Justice K. Narayana Kurup. He is a fellow scholar and a friend whose work and committed activism, on and off the Bench, I deeply admire. He can look back in pride at a long history of achievements and of contributions to thinking, even at global level, that have earned him many honours and awards, as documented in the present work. I need not go into details on the world-famous judgment that banned smoking in public places and still reverberates around the globe. There is of course, much more to be said about the legal achievements of Shri. Kurup, but that assessment is better reserved for a longer piece of writing in his honour.