A house among the many that dot Gulmohar Park. It is just a house, isn’t it? That was what I thought on my way there.
The prospect of entering a dancer’s house did mildly excite me. As I turned into a lush, green, rather posh stretch of the neighbourhood, I remember thinking: obviously, rich people. But there was no need to look for the house number. Rows of thookkuvilakkus hung from the balcony. Even smaller vilakkus were visible, and the South Indian-ness of the house was apparent before entering.
Inside, the light was soft. Reds, yellows and some white moved through the rooms, with wood and brass doing most of the work. It felt lived-in, almost temple-like. There was something of the Parthasarathy Temple in Triplicane, Chennai, in it—the lamps, brass, flowers, jasmine and camphor.
It was not cluttered, but it felt strangely full.
On the staircase, some beautiful wooden pieces caught the eye. They looked like ornamental objects picked up from a store. Only later came the explanation: they were old coconut scrapers from Tamil Nadu, their blades removed. Even the things that seemed familiar had another story here.
Rajiv Chandran, Geeta’s husband, was an enthusiastic guide, moving through the house and stopping at paintings, sculptures and prints to explain where they came from and why they were here.
Downstairs, upstairs
Downstairs is the studio of Padma Shri awardee Geeta Chandran, a Bharatanatyam dancer and guru. A painting of baby Krishna with Yashoda is among the first pieces Rajiv points out. It helps her students understand the world behind Thaye Yashoda—the relationship, the emotion and the imagery that sit behind the choreography. And the song started playing in the head before he finished explaining.
Suddenly, there were memories of performances and kutcheris. Bhava. Rasa. The feeling that lives in a performance and the feeling that travels from it to the spectator. Here, those ideas did not feel like something being explained. They seemed to be sitting quietly among the paintings and sculptures.
“So, whether it is visual art, whether it is forms and shapes, whether it is textures, whether it is colours, whether it is music, rhythm, philosophy, the whole spiritual, all this is very important because it is not just learning a piece, it is learning the whole piece. By giving it context, it will blossom,” says Rajiv.
Rajiv’s grandmother has found a new life here through objects that once belonged to her kitchen. Ladles, karandis and a thavi are arranged on a stand, topped with her large bindi. Geeta’s old practice sarees form the backdrop.
At the entrance, wooden gods and goddesses from Jaipur hang from the ceiling alongside more familiar forms. A stone Ganesha sits against a red wall, accepting flowers and offerings. “He loves sitting here, accepting all the flowers and offerings,” Rajiv says.
A Ganesha collection
Upstairs, where the couple lives, there is almost an army of smaller Ganeshas gathered from different parts of India. One, made by a tribal artist, is unusual enough to look like contemporary art in a Western museum. The collection has built itself slowly over three or four decades—from small shops in Chennai, from places the couple travelled to, from objects that caught their eye and from a time when prints were not valued as highly as they are now.
And that is where the house quietly overturns the first impression from the gate. Not everything here is expensive. Some pieces cost very little; some were found, picked up or repurposed. The point was never to fill the house with valuable things.
Rajiv sees it differently. It is not about money, but about passion—about living with the culture they are part of, in every sense. An old kitchen implement can sit beside a painting, while a small object picked up somewhere can hold its own among more obviously artful pieces.
Attention to details
For Geeta, that way of collecting begins with attention.
“It’s a question of keeping your eyes and fingers open all the time. And also putting things together. I think it’s also a challenge. How do you, even though it can be miscellaneous things, in a sense, assemble it? That is also a big story.”
A painting of a head was speaking to the sculpture of a head. Traditional objects sat alongside contemporary art without either looking misplaced. Brass caught the light; wood softened it. The predominantly white studio downstairs gave way to warmer rooms upstairs.
And then there is the fragrance. Jasmine and camphor drift through the rooms. It is familiar in a way that is difficult to separate from memory—the fragrance of a temple, flowers offered before a deity, a South Indian home where music and ritual have never been entirely separate from everyday life.
Geeta’s studio is downstairs; the living space is upstairs. The separation is deliberate. “When I come here. I know it’s work. The home and work, I think, need to be separate,” she says. Yet there is a guest room for visiting musicians and dancers from elsewhere in India, bringing another part of their world into the house.
By now, the house has moved a long way from that first impression at the gate. It is not a showroom, and it is not quite a museum. It is a home that has accumulated a way of looking over decades—one that allows a coconut scraper, a grandmother’s kitchenware, a practice saree, a tribal Ganesha, a painting and a brass lamp to sit within the same frame.
The objects are not the story by themselves. It is the looking, collecting, remembering and putting together that has made the house what it is. And somewhere between the studio downstairs and the warmer rooms upstairs, between jasmine and camphor, music and sculpture, old household things and contemporary art, the dots begin to connect.