Kintsukuroi – More beautiful being broken

The closer you look the less you see – A dialogue from a very famous English movie "Now You See Me." Taking a cue from this movie while I was reading through a magazine one Sunday morning, I came across Kintsukuroi. For the tongue twisting name it had like all the Japanese names, I decided to read further more to understand what it really is.

Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repaired pottery, but it's something more than that. Along with repairing the broken pottery with gold lacquer, it is also about understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

These days, would you even consider a broken ceramic bowl worth repairing, let alone consider it more beautiful for having been broken? Probably not. No, of course not. But slow down a minute. Consider the bowl, made by hand with malleable clay and fired to a couple thousand degrees, forever altering its molecular structure.

A handmade object, like a bowl or cup, is revered for the care it took to make it, its beauty, and its purpose. But broken, the object is demoted and loses its honor, so to speak. Repaired, however, can raise the object to a whole new level of appreciation. Often we expect repairs to be seamless and to make the object appear to be ‘new’ again, whereas this art pays homage to the idea that there is a place for ‘better than new’.

Take a step back and think. Sometimes life flows seamlessly from one perfect moment to the next, but often times we face struggles, insecurities, and set-backs that leave us broken. And we wonder what will become of the pieces. That is when I realized that this art form has come to my rescue. I immediately fell in love with the beauty of being broken.

Having been restless with every passing day, I feel liquid grief pulse through my veins. Sometimes the grief reaches its peak and my skin grates with a thought, life is so - insane. To start what I call as the central truth, nothing is right, everyone vexes me and I have a phantom of milestones to dwell on. Now the collective sum of this distressed past and some irretrievable broken instances, a shadow chases you with a placard in hand "You can run away, but you can't hide". While you sit down to gather these pieces, this art form helps you know what your mind, body and soul wants, to understand what it needs and what it doesn't. It teaches you when to be a part mathematician, part engineer, part nurse, part artist and part mystic.

As I try to superimpose my life with this art form and attempt a point-by-point refutation, I have suddenly become characteristically......fragile. I can't seem to endure the thought but it is inescapable. At times I feel, this is the reason why I was put on earth. By the time I bring myself up with every fleeting day, I sense I am slammed with the guilt and I act guilty. But this act of guilt helps me understand my true self, puts my shattered soul at armistice and being as one and pushes me to believe that I might have been bitter but the physics says you are not bitter unless you have been through a bitter experience. This allows me to understand that as long as I am not puffed up by happiness and success, the failures and sorrows will equally not break me from failing to accept rejection and rejecting acceptance. It teaches you to fix what is important, inevitable and not get carried away by the symbolism. 

This practice eventually puts life in perspective. It is a continuous process. Having retrospected the incidents in life I feel a lot more at peace. The art also teaches you never to regret, because at one point that is exactly what you needed in life. Its a strange thing for us humans to be so purposeful, yet irrational; so driven, yet so uncertain. Kinstsukoroi, allows you to be all this and more and be receptive towards the broken self  and look beautiful in your scars.