“No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.” Brooke Hampton

Staying true to Malayali simplicity, the decor at Kayal is understated, sustainable and inviting. An old world charm seeps out of the woven cane and wooden furniture, the vintage doors and windows, and these rustic framed mirrors.

As Ingo Maurer, the 'Poet of Light' said, "light is not a thing, but the spirit which catches you inside.” I guess it is this spirit that we need to work with. Lightly. Gently. So that it is just enough. So that there is some magic to how it interacts with the objects around and how we perceive it.

A home is where we are who we are, unfiltered and unfettered. To create a comfortable home - from scratch or redesigning an old space - can feel daunting, with the insane amount of choices and passing trends, or space and budget constraints.

Joshua Fields Millburn, one of the Minimalists, says his attitude took a turn when he realised how he had brought so many things into his life without questioning. The key to living with less, according to him, is to justify everything you have or want to buy.

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.. No more than one or few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

The Ivory Throne is the true life story of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last ruling queen of Travancore. It wasn't because she was a Queen that I liked her story. The evolution of her character and its integrity, and the graceful dignity with which she conducted herself through the trials and joys of life.

With the common goal of collaborative living, cohousing societies enhances interaction with neighbours, and relieves pressure on individual households with their model of shared responsibilities and resources.Most importantly, co-housing nurtures the basic human need for the sense of belonging.

We take the everyday things for granted. We cannot survive without them. Yet, we do not spare much thought for them - their beauty nor dignity. A writing desk, a pen stand, a pair of scissors… all mute witnesses to our day-to-day lives. But we forget how indispensable they are.

We don’t question the idea that how spaces are designed affects our minds, bodies and spirits. We might have gotten used to this idea, but its application hasn’t yet found prevalence in the collective psyche.

There is an immense joy you feel when things you have given up hope on, miraculously fix themselves and look clean. In that moment, I felt that.

We are all hoarders, without a doubt. To what extent could vary, but we most certainly are. Maybe we are hardwired to hoard. We might regret it eventually, but still we believe, we absolutely cannot help it.

We need to cook more, eat the most delicious meals, go to the beach with the family, go for walks and stay with our thoughts, meditate and breathe without worrying about the next thing we need to get done. Life needn’t be a marathon of to-do lists.

The is this old TV series called ‘Gilmore Girls’ about three Gilmore women - a mother, a daughter and her grandmother; and their complicated relationships. It is one of my favorites, but hard to say why. Not that it is relevant here either. How it is relevant to the topic at hand is that this is where I heard of Marie Kondo and her book.

Before machines invaded and took over this world, we had a long standing tradition of hand-built art, architecture and artifacts. The artisans were engaged in the process with their hands and mind. What was lost with the industrial age was what is described as the “visceral quality of execution.”

We are always in the middle of transition and flux. The moon waxes and wanes, the seasons change. It has been indicated that this affects in subtle, yet significant ways. We adapt to these to an extent, mostly unaware of doing it. But if we were to actively do it, the quality of our lives could greatly improve.

There are a lot of things that we have collected over the years or been passed down to us that have outlived their use. But you needn’t necessarily toss them so they end up in a landfill somewhere. It is far more worthwhile to give them a new life.

“Almost three quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by liquied, and more than half of the volume of the human body is made up of it; it is no wonder we are fascinated by the notion of liquid in life.”

During our busy daily routine, mostly spent indoors glued to our screens, we tend to forget how little of contact time we have with nature. It is not hard to believe that as little as 20 minutes of spent strolling or sitting in contact with nature can lower your stress considerably.

We live in a world confined within the capitalist tendencies of excess and accumulation, now, more than ever. Our aesthetic sensibilities have evolved to acquire more rather than the ‘nice’ and meaningful.