On Eldams Road stands a 75-year-old bungalow with red tiled roofs and wide verandahs. Once a family home, it has now been lovingly restored and opened as a space for gatherings. In the backyard, five old mango trees stand tall, giving cool shade and a sense of peace. This house, called My Bungalow, will soon welcome people again — this time for Under the Mango Tree – A Navaratri Celebration. For five days, the rooms and garden will be filled with music, dance, art, saris, food and conversation.
Lata Ganapathy, managing strategy, marketing & operations at My Bungalow, who curates the festival with Acharyanet Foundation, speaks about the house. “It has been renovated as an event space. And it still retains all the features of an old house because it’s not like just the shell is a bungalow, but inside you have a big hall. It still flows like a house. So it has big rooms and all that,” she says. The bungalow’s domestic scale, she adds, makes it suited to chamber concerts and small-scale cultural gatherings as much as to wedding festivities. “We can easily host up to 200 people here.”
Indoors, the programme places art and textiles. Meghna Unnikrishnan, an artist who is also trained in dance, shows a series of daily paintings of the goddess produced over the last five years. Prints and original works will be available. Chettinad Handloom returns to display a curated edit of saris, complete with a ‘sari kolu’ and a small fashion ramp featuring the label’s clients.
Food is also given its due. Arusuvai Arasu, noted for the devotion their cuisine receives during music season, has been invited to present a strictly traditional, vegetarian Navaratri menu — small tiffin dishes from mid-afternoon and fuller evening plates at 7 pm. “We’ve requested them to curate a specific menu for each day of the festival,” shares Lata.
The choice to site the stage in the garden emerged from the property itself. That decision allows the house to hold exhibitions uninterrupted while the garden becomes a separate, atmospheric hub, where audiences can drift in for a performance, a talk or simply to sit beneath the branches. Practicalities are considered, too — valet parking is offered, and the team has left space for audiences to move freely between rooms and the backyard. Lata adds, “We’re hoping that the rain gods will spare us for the next five days.”
As Lata sees it, the house has many roles — it is a stage for artistes, a garden for listeners, and a dining space for friends. For the next few days, it welcomes us all.
Under the Mango Tree – A Navaratri Celebration
Date: September 24-28
Exhibitions:
10 am-8 pm, Food: from 3 pm onwards, Performances: 4.30pm-7.30pm
Entry free. Website: www.mybungalow.co.in