architecture

A Secret Place

Mohit Khodidas

Jul 31, 2024 — 2 min read

It was drizzling lightly that day. I have walked on this unpaved path many times before. But it was the dampness and the silence that made me stop at a particular bend in the pathway. It is completely covered with trees from above. This spot made me feel something that I could not place neatly in my head. The place is surrounded by concrete madness on all sides. But this spot, right here, felt like a secret place. Unsure of what it (the place) meant to be, or what it wanted the passers-by to do (or not). Spaces, by design, have purpose. A bedroom for sleeping, a dining room for eating, a classroom to keep quiet and listen, a prayer room to beg, and so on.

But some places, like the one I saw, have the quality of indeterminacy, uncertainty. These places, though I call them secret, are right in front of us. It is a particular quality that emanates from it when encountered in a certain way, with a certain mind. Perhaps a child's mind. These places - the end of a pathway, a corner in a room, a storeroom attached to the kitchen in Indian houses (a kotharoom - a favourite place to get punished), an attic, a basement, or even behind a heavy curtain (as described beautifully by Langeveld) - remain undetermined, full of possibilities.

..the secret place is not a world built up by fantasy and creative imagination. Rather, it maintains the character of a creative simplicity of effortlessness, of the waking dream, of something unique, a mood, which can be recalled time and again.
- Martinus Jan Langeveld

These places, sometimes and only if one is terribly fortunate, remind you of things you have long forgotten which you know never happened. And these places may invoke some unknown terror that won't let you leave. Each time you are in its presence, it has the potential to be beautiful, tragic, and magical.

BROWNIE
In a corner of the bedroom is a great big curtain,
Someone lives behind it, but I don’t know who;
I think it is a Brownie, but I’m not quite certain.
(Nanny isn’t certain, too.)
I looked behind the curtain, but he went so quickly—
Brownies never wait to say, “How do you do?”
They wriggle off at once because they’re all so tickly.
(Nanny says they’re tickly too.)
- A.A. Milne

**When we were very young** by A.A. Milne, Illustrator: Ernest H. Shepard

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