Home is a refuge not only from the world, but a refuge from my worries, my troubles, my concerns. I like beautiful things around me... it delights my eyes and my soul is lifted up.
These words of Maya Angelou sum up the ethos of the beautiful home of Dipa and Atul Bagai, both of whose life and work has taken them to remote parts of India and the world.
Their earliest postings were in Bundelkhand and Manipur respectively, both with glorious traditions of craft and weaving, and their home even now displays some beautiful pieces from those days. Their globetrotting professional careers took them to distant corners of the world, and they spent considerable time in Asia, allowing them to especially explore the art, craft and textile world of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, all the way to China and Mongolia in the Far East and Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey in the other direction.
On being posted back to India they were lucky to find a large, beautiful house full of light and air, the unique feature of which is a charming walled courtyard at the back of the house, full of lush greenery. The house provides a perfect setting for their collection of rosewood furniture, paintings, carpets, textiles and objets d’art and is a testimony to their exquisite taste and extensive travels— although Dipa insists that its Atul who has the unerring connoisseur’s eye, and she is largely responsible for the looking after!
The carpets and rugs that cover the floor of the generously proportioned sitting room and the sunken bar area add vibrant colour and pattern. They have been collected over the years from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Morocco. But pride of the place belongs to a Turkish Hereke which hangs on a wall. It reprises a page from an antique illuminated Koran manuscript with an intricate flower border, and a tiny cartouche hidden in the design identifies the carpet’s origin and the weaver’s signature.
Banaras brocades provide stunning backdrops for their artefacts—a tall Buddha from the Thailand Myanmar border, a Tara from Tibet, and an antique Chettinad pillar from which hang brass lamps. The couple explain that enamoured by the Mughal ‘kinkhwab’ brocades, Tibetan monks in the mid 1800s commissioned the weavers of Banaras to develop ‘gos-chen’ ceremonial tapestries which they had been importing from China.
These came to be known as ‘gyasar’ brocades, which are an amalgamation of Chinese Buddhist satin silk style and Mughal Muslim weave craft from the Hindu City of Light, that promises ‘moksh’ and ‘nirvana’ alike. The walls are covered with paintings by artists from Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Cambodia and Mongolia. A small MF Husain painting which the artist made for their daughter hangs on one wall, whilst a collection of Ramesh Gorjala’s Krishnas and Hanumans adorn another corner.
Like Oprah Winfrey says so tellingly, “When you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.” No better way of describing the Bagai home which is a wonderful reflection of who they are—elegant, refined, warm and hospitable.