Bring the museum home

A slightly chipped pair of slippers that dug heels into every beach weve been to in three years a decadeold sturdy umbrella that our mother believes will help us brave the Mumbai rains a sidepillow weve held on to since birth In our quest to look outwards for the extraordinary we forget that it is the most ordinary entities that make our lives truly extraordinary And all these ordinary things mdash the slippers the umbrella the sidepillow and more mdash are part of our own evergrowing museumOne of the responses they got PicInstagramWhile the Museum of Ordinary Objects MOOO run by selfconfessed hoarders Choiti Ghosh of Tram Arts Trust Karan Talwar of Harkat Studios and Sananda Mukhopadhyaya of Extensions Arts has been opening up this conversation wherever it travels over the past week it has taken up the task of pushing Instagrammers to reimagine their homes as museums because well theres nowhere else to head to right nowChoiti GhoshAs part of Ghar Ek Museum MOOO wants you to post pictures of objects at home along with the stories behind them as per prompts posted by the curators When our first museum came up we had coined this catchphrase MOOO can show itself anywhere anytime it exists around you And when everyone went into lockdown it became even more apt All Ghar Ek Museum does is make you realise that you live in a museum explains Ghosh an object theatre practitionerSananda Mukhopadhyaya from MOOOTheir first prompt was a dear object that keeps you company through the day It is comfortable and keeps you grounded It is a familiar encasing of our feet Mine are white and blue and I invariably lose a pair once a day What colour are yours While the prompt clearly pointed to slippers interestingly a lot of followers interpreted only the first part to post pictures of things like headphones and socks Pictures of slippers were accompanied with captions like she brought me home coz she loved me But now that I am old and worn out and dirty she said she loves me more sic mdash a reminder that we need just a nudge to take a relook at things that surround us Our prompts are aimed at giving people a sense of direction We are thinking of going room to room to explore families of similar objects and the different ideas that these provoke says Mukhopadhyaya a theatre artisteKaran TalwarTheir next prompt objects from the kitchen The Internet is flooded with cooks and bakers right now laughs Talwar a filmmaker adding The kitchen is a potent place where intimate conversations take place You relate to these objects you use daily for instance a certain glass your grandfather used or a kadhai in which your grandmother would cook These objects arent celebrated enough but they are great vessels of storiesTalwar adds that while conversing with followers of MOOO he realises that the simple act of being able to tell a story has been comforting for some When youre given a prompt youre surrounded by stories that are your own so youre not alone anymore Its a holistic way of coming back to yourselfLog on to museumofordinaryobjects on InstagramCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates