MEMORIES BRICK & MORTAR

Embracing the unknown and as an ode to her grandmother, Husna Rahaman of Fulcrum Studio weaves a colossal sanctuary for new memories in her home in Bengaluru

- HUSNA RAHAMAN

With words weighed and considered, I begin. There are few, if any, times in one’s professional journey that the construct of all that is known, evaporates. It is in the unknown and the unknowing that one dwells. It is a space as emptying as it is saturating.

Hira is named after my grandmother. It is on this piece of land that we lived. Just us. Husna and Hira. The years of togetherness were robust, filled with the smell of fresh mint being ground into cumin and tamarind.

I can still hear the rhythmic scraping of the grainy stone being worked, the innumerable calls for hot tea while the fragrance of loose earth rose into the air as she repotted her roses. She passed one evening, it was an evening, unlike all the decades in that home, on that land. It stilled time. But time will not be stilled.

I stood on the empty land, the removal of her favourite mogra plant uprooted me.

How does the future coalesce with memories, how did one begin? By simply shedding the past and the future and standing ready to receive. From the inanimate, from the long shadows of the past that grow with the evening sun, from the stillness amid the orchestra of dreams. I began by refusing every notion of what I knew to be true, familiar and understood.

I stood empty and wanting. Willing to hear, feel.