By Eshita Marwah
Every once in a while, life offers moments that feel almost cinematic. Moments that align as coincidences, revealed quietly, years later as though an earlier version of you had left behind a note for the future. Recently, while sorting through old canvases and papers from the long, uncertain months of the pandemic, I stumbled upon a painting that I had almost entirely forgotten about.
Made during the lockdown of 2020, a time when we were all searching for ways to stay grounded, it was inspired by the facades of Portugal with powder blue walls, sun-washed whites, and the architectural rhythm of small European streets. During the stillness of those months, I had been drawn to images of Portuguese towns: tiled buildings, narrow lanes, and houses painted in shades that seemed to soften the afternoon light.
Somewhere along the way, the painting slipped out of sight, tucked behind boards, misplaced between moves, lost in the chaos of a studio in motion. I had assumed it was lost. Until it appeared again. Finding it felt less like discovering an old artwork and more like opening a time capsule. But what struck me wasn’t the painting itself, it was the story it seemed to hold, one I hadn’t recognised before.
The colors were the first thing that caught my attention. Powder blue and white, the very palette that now defines The Afternoon Library. The same hues run through our visual language, our moodboards, and quite coincidentally, my office as well. A space designed only recently yet echoing a pairing I had once painted almost instinctively.
And then there was the number. At the very top of the canvas, in a small handwritten detail, was 25, my birthdate and also the year The Afternoon Library officially came to life. Interestingly, this year on my birthday, I found myself in Portugal, walking past facades almost identical to the ones that inspired that painting — pale blues, soft whites, and sunlit streets that seemed to exist outside of time.
At some point, years before The Afternoon Library existed, this small painting had somehow gathered all of these threads. The seeds had been planted long before I realised they were growing. Because for years, I had been drawn to the same things: slow afternoons, sunlit rooms, shelves of books, objects collected over time, spaces that invite you to pause rather than rush through them. A world built around craft, storytelling, and thoughtful design had already been taking shape somewhere in the background of my mind. I simply hadn’t named it yet.
Looking back now, it feels almost inevitable that The Afternoon Library would come into being. The dream had been moving with me quietly through my life, waiting for its moment. And maybe that is how the most meaningful ideas begin: not as grand declarations, but as thoughts that arrive slowly and never really leave. They surface in sketches, in colours, in the places that stay with us long after we’ve left them. And sometimes, in powder blue facades painted on a slow summer afternoon, long before we understand why.