Mumbai: Visitors had come to the Asiatic Society of Mumbai on Sunday to take apart an 85,000-brick Lego wall. The installation had been designed to be dismantled, with visitors encouraged to pull it apart and take the bricks home.
Then, around 5 pm, they were told to stop.
The activity had been expected to continue until 6 pm. Guinness World Record holder and Lego artist Ritam Bhatnagar, who had built the wall for a Flipkart activation, said his team was told that a government official was expected at the Asiatic Society and the premises had to be cleared.
The queue broke. For a brief moment, people surged toward the wall, trying to get their bricks before the activity ended. Bhatnagar’s team began dismantling the installation themselves, alongside the few visitors who had not yet got their turn.
Bhatnagar was still standing beside the wall as the crowd began to clear.
“People who just called me up are like, ‘We are on our way.’ I feel so bad right now because I had told them it’s open till 6 pm,” he said.
Just hours earlier, the steps of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai library had been crowded with people waiting patiently to pull the wall apart.
It was a scorching October afternoon in Mumbai. One woman had wrapped her dupatta around her face, and others in the crowd were looking for any way to shield themselves from the glare. Some carried umbrellas.
Children and adults stood in a queue waiting for their turn, some climbing onto small stools to reach bricks higher up. By late afternoon, sections of the installation had already disappeared. Still visible in one corner were the words: “Feel free to take.”
Flipkart had approached Bhatnagar to build the installation. Planning began about a month earlier, and the actual construction started a week before the event. It took around 300 person-hours to put together, using bricks sourced from 17 countries.
Around 500 people visited over the two days, Bhatnagar said. He met everyone from a three-year-old child to a 75-year-old grandmother. One person had even travelled from Pune.
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‘Building something helps; it de-stresses us’
On Sunday afternoon, Karunya’s parents brought her from Mulund to Fort to see the installation.
“My husband and my daughter are both Lego freaks. I am just here to accompany them,” her mother said.
Karunya was carrying a Lego camera she had made the previous day. She had brought it because she wanted to take a picture with Bhatnagar. Her mother said Karunya and her father often built Lego together.
Karunya told Bhatnagar she loved Batman Lego sets. Bhatnagar later joked that when children wanted sets like those, it was sometimes the parent doing the choosing.
“A lot of parents I meet buy Legos in pretence for their kids, but usually for themselves,” he said.
Ananya Borse and her mother had travelled from Navi Mumbai. Ananya had picked up the Lego habit from her younger brother, who she said was “super into Lego”. He had exams and could not come on Sunday, so his mother and sister had come to collect some bricks for him.
As the afternoon went on, people waited their turn patiently, and the crowd seemed to keep getting bigger.
Bhatnagar’s colleague Avi was also helping run the activity. He had first interacted with a Lego set only two years ago, in 2024. Now he was part of the team behind the Flipkart activation.
“People feel it’s like a second form of therapy. Building something helps. It de-stresses us,” he said.
Visitors continued pulling bricks from the wall and carrying them away in the Lego bags being handed out at the event.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)