Stepping barefoot in a home is normal in India, but in a mud house, not knowing I was about to feel something I hadn’t felt in years.

At first, it felt like any other moment when we checked into most Indian houses. But as soon as my feet touched the packed earth of that mud house in Ecoplore, everything became cool and calm. It was not just fresh air; it was stagnant air. As though the house were breathing. As I could breathe at last as well.

This was not only a house of mud. But a well-structured buildup—every wall, every curvature, every silent corner seemed to have something to say. The insides were not glitzy nor perfect. But then again they had something, whether it was the light catching on the leaf-shaped lamps or how they made a work of art out of broken mirrors, a little bit of the world reflecting back at you. It reminded me of the fact that beauty will never require polishing, but presence.

I found myself slowing down. Listening. Feeling. There were simulated raindrops gently falling in the outdoor space, but I didn't feel like they were simulated. It felt like a moment in childhood. Like calm. Like a moment the world forgot to rush.

Being inside that mud house made me insightfully aware of the reality of how much humans need to connect to nature. Not in a ridiculous, extreme way but in smaller, everyday ways. In touching the wall and knowing it came from the earth. Nature is not separate from us. It is us. We just forget sometimes.

If we are to protect it, we first have to feel it. To feel it, we need spaces like this, which welcome us in and which gently remind us we are not machines made for concrete and chaos. We are human. And sometimes, in order to come home to ourselves, we need to walk barefoot into a mud house.