Words Of An Idle Mind

That Which Binds The Broken Walls

How does a dilapated broken building become a safe haven? A home?

How does a structure that's falling apart, become a tether for people to not fall apart?

How is it that no-one notices a sight to behold, unless they are lost or are looking for something they can't understand and yet, the moment they step inside an absurd looking fantasy, they seemingly find direction, and in a sense, their answers?

How?

A construction painted in comical abstracts, an art that only graffiti can justify, was one such unique place that was holding itself upright, not by cement and steel bars, but by emotions.

Sounds surreal right?

Oh it is! Or it was until the emotions were no longer available to bind it's mortal together, to sustain it.

Here's an ode to a place where journeys began, where they changed like the faces of the wind, and where they ended too. Most of them, always better than for worse.

The rickety building of HaikuJAM cottage was maybe falling apart from inside, but it never made it evident. Infact, everytime a new stranger walked in, it felt like it was charming them to leave their worries aside and form a bond with an inanimate object like it's a real person by feeling it's warmth, not just by the warm colours of its walls, but with the warm & peaceful intentions and feelings that you let yourself be engulfed by. And, it came with humans too, sometimes too many, sometimes too few, but always, with humans. So, you not only took architecture and interior design home, but you took friendships, relationships, bonds that still persist even after the building isn't there to mediate it.

So you think I'm telling you about a magical place, right here in Mumbai, that gave you everything you wanted and more? Well, yes and no. Yes because you never left without a new seed if hope & change growing inside of you, and No because you had to be open to hope & change in the first place.

Here's where my theory comes in — our broken-ness was the only thing that kept the magical home intact. We, with our flaws and worries and insecurities, we made the place ours, because we shared it with the place, just as much as it shared our need for belonging, need for companionship, need for solace. It was not a simple barter of negativity with positvity. It was a support system that held onto you, helping you stay strong in the toughest of times, if only you cried on it's shoulder, you shared your worries with it. You had to give in, and you'll get more than you asked for. Immersion.

I firmly believe now, a place can change your life, and the more out-of-the-ordinary it is, the more closer you'll find yourself to a world where possibilities are endless, and love is limitless. It's hard to say goodbye to home, but home stays with us in the form of nostalgia, and from now, it's the nostalgia that'll bind our broken walls.