When you arrive at Chandra and Anal Jain’s home, you walk into a radiant energy field. The couple belong to a certain lost age of refinement, unconditional warmth and hospitality that translates into tall glasses of lemonades, cheese crackers with olives, health advice, life questions, easy but deep conversations that begin sometime in the afternoon and go on till the stars begin to pop in the sky. And then there is the house. Every inch of it envisioned by Chandra’s gifted eye. Pieced together in her head and heart all the years she and Anal lived in a rented house, waiting for the perfect plot to reveal itself.
And so when an old house in a leafy, quiet locality was found, they knew it was time to build their dream. “The footprint of the old house was retained (the foundation and the load bearing beams) but all the walls were taken down and a new flow of space created,” says Chandra, who is draped in a signature Benaras silk just like her house but more about that later. The house begins to gently tell its story when you enter via an old teak door designed by her and walk into a court yard lush with an abundant avocado tree, bamboo bushes, potted plants and a Peltophorum tree that sheds its yellow flowers all over the ground.
Chandra, a passionate revivalist and supporter of Indian crafts, works closely with soapstone carvers in Shivarapatna, a village in Karnataka and satin finished candleholders, a modern chair with a Wenge back and more punctuate the yard. An old Chettinad door flanked by a jasmine creeper opens and we step into a shell of light and healing silence broken only by a koyal’s occasional cooing.
The afternoon is mellow and the west wing of the house is bathed in the golden light of the gently setting sun. Chandra extended the wing to almost the boundary wall and covered the division between the wall and the living space with a poly-carbonated roof, letting the sun come in almost unobstructed to the dining room, the kitchen and the informal seating zone.
The elevated formal seating area in the East wing with its bank of windows also enjoys shifting patterns of light as the sun moves through the day around the house. Chandra is the quintessential mistress of both minutiae and bold brush strokes so tube roses breathe in a large copper vessel. Pink veined orchids and ruddy gerberas make statements in assorted vases. Bamboo chicks stream down large windows with built in seats. Kota stone feels like silk underfoot. A marble lotus holds rose petals in its palm. Deepams suspended and standing in strategic nooks glint and green fronds nourished to a gloss smile from brass urns. Porcelain lamp bases and coloured glass, a pair of green, jade textured lamps from Singapore, traditional lacquered boxes from Burma blend well with antique furniture that has lived with the Jains for over three decades in Bangalore.
Kashmiri rugs, silverware, wooden carvings, a Picchwai from their old home, mirrors, candles, rose water dispensers, a centre piece of a brass urli with living lotuses, pen drawings by Adimoolam, throw cushions clad in Indian textiles, Auroville paper lamps and rose pink Benarsi silk curtains with gold flowers cascading down a floor to ceiling bank of windows, create a rich canvas of colour, texture and memory.
We ask Chandra if her old furniture fitted in the new house and she smiles, “I don’t design spaces to fit in furniture. The house was supposed to have a new sensibility and feel and even though the old pieces fitted in effortlessly, this is a new home with an old soul. We have salvaged old wood to make windows, `aged’ the wood where ever it was new. We did not want a melamine coated, varnished look. We even transplanted an old Mangalore ceiling with occasional glass tiles, over the formal living area.” The dramatic double height ceiling translates sunlight into golden squares and is the definitive stroke of genius in the house. Great ideas like extending the East wing beyond a beam and turning the beam into a long window seat give the house a great deal of character.
We descend into a well lit basement where Chandra stores a staggering collection of Benarsi sarees and fabrics.She has been working hard over the last few years to help weavers and embroiderers in Benaras to keep alive a tradition which has been almost starved to death by government apathy. The blinds, curtains and even furniture upholstery in her house celebrate the delicate intricacies of Benarsi muslins and silks that she is fighting to revive.
A flight of stairs detailed with puppets, a larger than life Tanjavur painting and Moradabad lamps leads us to a lobby where Chandra listens to music and works on her computer. The two spacious bedrooms with attached baths are private spaces that only the family has access to but they too, like every other space in the house open to the green vistas outside. The terrace is still a work in progress with its bamboo screen that blocks out other terraces, flourishing plants, flowers, lotus buds in urlis and creepers. Anal’s study is tucked away here and he works here uninterrupted till Chandra buzzes him on the intercom to come down and have tea with her!
“What I love about this house is that it is so quiet except for the resident koyal of course! From every corner of the house, you can see greenery and sometimes even sheep grazing in a distance! It is quite pastoral. We wanted to make the sky and the earth our own and we have. We always wanted to live in this home,” smiles Chandra.
The soul of the house is its fragrance, its warmth, its ease and its openness and it really is an extension of Chandra’s spirit. Her love for her family, her roots, her history and her passionate need to craft life into a work of art.
Photos courtesy Sanjay Ramachandran
Wow, what a beautiful house. And an equally beautiful narrative 🙂