What happens when you give an ordinary space a cultural reason to gather

This weekend in Mumbai, the once-upon-a-time famed music store Rhythm House reopens as a listening room a decade after closing its doors, signalling how India’s new third spaces are turning up where nobody planned them

05 Sep 2026

Shambhavi Das

There’s a collective public agreement that Indian cities are in dire need of third space – places that harbour community. Sometimes the third space turns out to be a long queue outside a venue, where you unexpectedly begin to socialise with the people around you, because inside is what your English teacher called the class when it got rowdy: a fish market. So third spaces, in themselves, have also evolved. They no longer necessarily need to be purpose-built cafes, parks or community centres; sometimes, all they need is a reason to linger. Inspired by the New York City subway system and referencing Train Jazz, two 20-something students, Atishay Khanna and Adwitiyaa Pramanik, recently embarked on a side project called Delhi Metro Jazz, turning the city’s nine metro lines into a simulated jazz composition. Each line becomes an instrument, each station a note, and suddenly a commute measured in minutes, delays, and interchanging stations has a soundtrack. The project was intended to make public transport feel more human, but it also makes an everyday piece of infrastructure feel like a cultural space.

This urge to give places a social life is increasingly spilling into retail, too. The showroom, historically a place one visited to look at something before deciding whether you could afford its offerings, is learning to host. IKEA India, for instance, regularly programmes workshops and events in its stores, from sustainability sessions to art and craft workshops. Its upcoming Open House in Mumbai goes one step further with live music, book clubs, social mixers, workshops and kids’ activities. Nike has similarly turned its stores into starting points for running communities, with training sessions that begin at the store before moving out onto the street. In Mumbai, its After Dark Tour is a sporting event, yes, but also a temporary claim on public space.

Photography courtesy of Rise India

Even the showroom is beginning to understand that perhaps people need more than a very convincing sofa to give them a reason to come back. This made PUMA and Jaipur Rugs’ Suede Sounds in Mumbai particularly interesting. On September 5 and 6, the two brands take over the former infamous music store, Rhythm House, which had been out of use for nearly a decade and bring it back, temporarily, as a listening room with rare vinyls, live music, bespoke decor and Jaipur Rugs’ installations. It is a sneaker and rug collaboration, technically, but the more interesting product is the room itself that turns into a listening experience for this weekend.

There is something almost reassuring about this shift. In a city where a table at a cafe can be social currency and every public square seems to have acquired a commercial agenda, brands, institutions and even infrastructure are beginning to manufacture little pockets of shared experiences. Sometimes it is a jazz note on your way home. Sometimes it is a workshop between bookshelves and flat-pack furniture. Sometimes it is a group of women running through Mumbai after dark. And sometimes it is a room that has been sitting empty for ten years, suddenly playing music again. Perhaps the new third space isn’t really a new space at all. Perhaps it is simply an ordinary space that has finally been given a reason to gather.