LIVING SPACES
Eclectic expressions of home
MONA RAMAVAT
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Tejdeep Kaur Menon’s home in Hyderabad is a soothing mix of themes and designs infused richly with arts from all four South Indian states.
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Photos: K. Ramesh Babu
Textures of India: Rich collection of motifs.
At first glance, the Menons’ home looks like it was done up by a poet mistakenly turned interior decorator, seeking a muse lost in Kerala! “Well, you could say that’s every bit me,” says Additional Director General of Police, Tejdeep, settling us in her plush drawing room, touched just a bit with a rugged charm. Poetry comes to her naturally and her husband, Amarnath K. Menon, a senior journalist, is from Kerala, which explains the heavy Kerala influence on the home they designed together six years ago.
Making it up are elements brought artistically together, as a result of her numerous visits to Kerala and art she’s patronised from places she was posted to over the past 20-odd years. “The visual treat you see is merely a thoughtful mix of things from humble spaces that only creates the illusion of indulgence!” she smiles. The entire flavour of the house reads ethnic with heavy woodwork, temple bells and elephant figurines dominating the design. Thuwalis or wooden crafted borders run across the exteriors as a continuing theme. Under these are the two entrances to the house — elaborately carved wooden doors that immediately lend an aura of the past. Decorating these are heavy door knockers brought from Tharawaads or old traditional Kerala homes. To balance the design,on the other side of the doors, Tejdeep opted for bastar metal work that’s a specialty of the ethnic Gonds and other tribes in Chattisgarh. But greeting upfront are stone and metal urlis filled with flower petals floating on water. “Traditionally, these are set out with large floral motifs in the front courtyard of a Kerala home during Onam, but I decided to make it an everyday thing,” shares Tejdeep. Once inside, the drawing room is replete with the Kerala touch — the traditional wooden pillars and a wall done up entirely with bamboo work that’s called kalimannu chitrangal, literally translating to clay pictures, which is essentially finely baked terracotta that fit like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and arranged to make a theme — an art form from the Kozhikode district of Kerala.
Exquisite workmanship
While this fills the eye on one side, on the other is a dining table with a massive round glass top and elephant trunks making up the bottom. This she got made by artisans in Tirupati some 15 years ago. “The town of Tirupati (not the temple above) is famous for wooden arts and crafts,” she informs. The flooring is interesting too, with old style glazed tiles sourced from the Sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu. “The 500-year-old art of baking these terracotta tiles is from the Athangudi village there,” Tejdeep lets us know. The bright coloured flooring peps up the subdued tones of wood in the house and adds a refreshing dimension. It is scrubbed with coconut oil to keep the tiles looking polished all the time, “which is also the traditional way of maintaining them in good condition.” Just off the drawing room is another slightly more exclusive seating area. Perhaps the most intriguing feature of this room is the centre table, made of exquisite rosewood with extraordinary inlay work from Mysore. “Craftsmen of Mysore use eight different types of wood and it takes months, sometimes years to complete a single artwork or piece of furniture,” says Tejdeep. The result: a beautiful play of colour and texture, where no paint is used, as in one large portrait of a woman near the tulasi plant in her courtyard. She also has a beautiful collection of chairs and artefacts from Kerala here, some of which were brought over from Chennamangalam, Amarnath’s village near Kochi. We found one adorned with a yali or a good luck charm found at the entrance of many South Indian temples. Very fine examples of traditional Kerala metal craft can also be found everywhere in the Menons’ home.
Echoes of tradition
Most traditional homes in Kerala have wooden beams on the ceiling. Tejdeep has created a similar effect with short wooden columns across the roof under the staircase. Lining her staircase walls too are three artworks picked up from artisans in Tirupati. One of these is an Ashtalakshmi and another, a pictorial story of the Mahabharata done up in wood.
At the sitting area on the first floor, we found Cheriyal papier mache masks and paintings of Warangal apart from the wood-painted Kondapally toys. Something very interesting that Tejdeep showed us was a wood carved Ganesh idol and a chair of the same work crafted from mango wood, a dying art that is practised now by only few families in Srikalahasti, near Tirupati. The Kerala influence can be seen unmistakably off this area where an open space is designed like a charipadi or sit out that probably every Kerala home has, and is meant to overlook the lush green countryside. In her home of course, it’s a low seating bordering the balcony. The bedrooms on the same floor are designed with the same wood theme, but are far more contemporary than the rest of the spaces in the home. Apart from the wood and stonework, the Menons’ home gets an earthy feel thanks to the extensive use of terracotta. The outer spaces are a garden of sorts with Rajasthani style frescoes in terracotta decorating the walls in the courtyard. Each of these is like a story in itself. There’s a story about every single thing in her home that relates to the Menons in some personal way. “I’d say it’s Kerala recreated for Amarnath, a relaxing retreat for our son Shabad, and well, call it my poetry in concrete!” she bids us farewell.
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