Long before the home’s walls felt the first touch, tracing their weathered brushstrokes, or heirlooms were passed from aged hands into younger ones, there persisted a portrait of a family’s life. In restoring this early 1900s colonial mansion in North Kolkata, Ajay Arya, Principal Interior Designer and Founder at A Square Designs, leaned on memory as an unassuming yet faithful ally. Encompassing 10,000 sq ft, The Ancestral Home flickers to life in his gaze like a quiet act of recognition. The historic quarter of Burrabazar, once the city’s epicentre, is now a labyrinthine tangle of streets and ancient façades standing shoulder to shoulder — the residence at hand tucked behind its ornate frontage, peering into the mercantile scene. With the family relocating from their bari to a condominium, Ajay, assumed the role of custodian, balancing what the house must remember and what it could release to follow the family forward. Speaking to the inimitable nature of the home’s domestic vocabulary, Ajay notes, “The architraves, solid wood doors, cast iron work, stained glass and handmade Portuguese tiles — over a century old — are elements beyond replication in their craftsmanship. It would, in all honesty, be unfair to rip these away from the house. So instead, our interventions prioritised authenticity over mere cosmetic renewal.”
“I felt answerable to both the past and the future, and I rest easy knowing that we gave it our all. How fortunate we must be to have something so precious to safeguard and pass on to generations that will walk in through these doors"
