The names had taken root long before the trees did. Mani maruthu, Mandharam, Ilanji, Kodappana—were words celebrity author and sreenwriter Anand Neelakantan first encountered in Malayalam songs, long before he knew what these trees looked like. The words stayed with him. Then, as the trees themselves became harder to find, curiosity became a quest. He began to search for them, tracking species one by one and bringing home their saplings.
There is something of the writer in that impulse: the instinct to return to stories that seem familiar and look again, this time for what has been overlooked, forgotten or left untold. In Thekkumthara, Wayanad, that same instinct has taken an architectural form. Anand calls his home Neelanchalam, a name fashioned from the names of his parents: Neelakantan and Chellammal. The house, which took him over a year and a half to build looks toward the Banasura hill ranges, which are carpeted with coffee and plantain plantations.
The garden is the first thing that announces itself—slightly unruly and unmistakably Kerala: no clipped hedges or carefully curated vistas. Plants grow where they please. “Landscaping kills the natural beauty of the place,” he smiles.
Neelanchalam, built in a Kerala-Western hybrid style, has an abundance of doors and windows, allowing the breeze from the foothills to swim around the rooms freely. Its terracotta roof is both aesthetically planned and is a practical response to Wayanad’s alternating seasons of cold and humid. “The roof keeps the house naturally cool,” he says adding, “avoiding the use of concrete was one of my first decisions.”
At the centre is a nadumuttam, or the traditional courtyard. The wooden pillars and the well are unmistakably Kerala note. Yet it doesn’t feel like a recreation of the past.
Neelanchalam has a life of its own. Neelakantan has allowed to it to grow into its surroundings rather than impose its shape on them. Near the entrance, a small waterfall made with natural rock feeds a fish pond. Jackie, his 15-year-old black Labrador, pads around with lazy confidence.
For all the house’s architectural details, however, the author’s favourite workspace is disarmingly simple: a small table on the balcony near the dining room: just a wooden table, a view and the Banasura hills beyond.
The house is a departure from the apartment life Neelakantan and his wife Aparna left behind in Mumbai. For now, Neelanchalam continues to gather things that matter: plants, pets, books, paintings and fragments of a life lived elsewhere. Fittingly it is also where stories wait to be written by one of India’s bestselling authors.