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HOUSE OF CONTEMPLATIONS HOUSE OF CONVERSATIONS
Outlook
|January 21, 2026
TO the self and the others, this home is a shelter, a place of contemplation, a space for conversations. The guestbook, which Aradhana Seth calls the 'Elsewhere Book', is a drawing board, a container, a time machine where you can find yourself and others in an elsewhere time and place.
"...Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place
Like an airplane where you can see the world from a perspective and yet, you are in a place where you are above and beyond, disconnected from everything that pulls you down.
Here, everything comes apart to form a fantasy. Like a boat that's anchored in a verandah. Like the clay soldiers who stand guard in their colourful uniforms guarding the house that's a museum of memories of people and places, of love and loss, of grief and laughter, of rain and sunshine that filters in through the tiled roof. This story is from the January 21, 2026 edition of Outlook.
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