After my childhood growing up in my grandmother’s home, I didn’t often get to live in so much space,” smiles Vandana Gopikumar, co-founder, The Banyan. Indeed in the early years of The Banyan, she shared a two-bedroom house in Chennai with co-founder Vaishnavi Jayakumar and at least two dozen mentally ill women the duo were caring for at the time. So, the expanse that greets you when you enter the home she now shares with husband Senthil Kumar, is something to enjoy. The couple’s home is behind the premises of Real Image Media Technologies, and is actually Senthil’s childhood home, recently renovated by the talented Vikram Phadke.
“The house is about 50 years old. So Vikram mainly worked with reorganising the space, breaking up walls, putting through new doors and alterations like that,” Senthil explains.
The ground floor is airy, with large French windows that fill the rooms with light. The former dining room is a “middle” living room that opens out into a slightly smaller family room with a well-stocked bar. The dining room is what was once, “where all the womenfolk would retreat while the men got together,” Senthil explains. The room later became a guest room before its new avatar as a dining room that opens into a breakfast nook and the kitchen. Upstairs, the couple’s living quarters consist of two large rooms — a master bedroom they share with their boxer Clay, and Vandana’s study. Both rooms have adjoining balconies, one of which leads out of the spacious master bathroom with a walk-in wardrobe. The bathroom features a skylight, and a bathtub.
But what makes the house both a home as well as beautiful, can be traced to Vandana’s touch. “Vikram and I both planned some of the features of the interiors together but the placement of the furniture, colours and all that is mine,” she explains. The ground floor features several knick knacks, paintings and wall hangings with a mythological theme. “I wanted to create a sense of Malayalam culture meeting Tamil culture. So the colour palette was warm — white and cream with gold trimmings, reds and oranges — and art from both regions,” she explains. While one living room features paintings of Kerala-style temple murals, the dining room has Tanjore paintings.
On the furniture, she says, “We didn’t really buy any new furniture — all the sofas, armchairs, etc are old and were already here, we only had them reupholstered in new fabric.” Many of the shelves were also custom-made by carpenters. “The few pieces we bought were from Rani Arts and Teak and Teak Heirlooms. Most of the knick knacks came from our travels or from places like Dakshina Chitra.”
Ever conscious of the privilege of so much space in a crowded city, Vandana plans to use the huge garden to draw people together to brainstorm on social initiatives among other things.
— ranjithagunasekaran@expressbuzz.com