Something old, something new

One would assume that building her own home, where she has lived the longest, may have either been her greatest challenge or her most liberating endeavour. Purely by virtue of spatiality and decor, Pavitra Rajaram’s home in Mumbai is a smorgasbord of colours, textures, art and conversations. It is rich and whole, with an element of surprise that comes with the coexistence of the new and old. “I’m rooted in an aesthetic that comes out of my personal experiences with India. I grew up between Chennai and Bengaluru. I learnt dance at Kalakshetra in Chennai and studied art history,” Pavitra mentions, illustrating the mix of influences that shaped her early life.

Her journey through literature, art, history and music was a natural one which has culminated into a profound appreciation and understanding of design. One that integrated into her work and as a way of life for the aesthete in a home shared with her husband Paul Abraham alongside their four sons (who now mostly live abroad).

Located in a highrise dotting Mumbai’s skyline, their home encompasses 3,800 sq ft, with sweeping views of the racecourse and the Arabian Sea. With a living and television room, the kitchen and dining area adjunct by four bedrooms, the home is a vignette of their sojourns. Paul, aside from being a banker, is also an art collector and the founder of Sarmaya Arts Foundation. “A shared passion between us is art and our love for books. Paul’s passion lies in history and our shelves are filled with historical volumes. Meanwhile, I have a fondness for textiles and gardens, reflected in the array of books on those subjects,” she elaborates. “This home is a curation of some of my things, some of Paul’s. And some that we built and acquired together.” For her, it’s crucial to consider the home’s story, the elements she wishes to highlight and the path she envisions for them. “Once you know where you’re going with it, your choices become quite instinctive,” Pavitra outlines. “Paul leans towards classical forms,” she points towards a massive eight-seater wooden dining table and their rattan chairs. “So, I ended up using dark woods. It was the first time I used so many deep hues of wood in one space. To bring life and vibrancy, I decided to work with the bright colourful carpets and settle them all into this ecosystem.”

This said ecosystem entails a seemingly serendipitous coming together of textiles, eclectic furniture, objets d’art alongside some great art on the walls. On a deep-hued wall in the living room is a mezzotint engraving by artist Sir Robert Ker Porter and engraved by Giovanni Vendramini, a triptych titled The Storming of Seringapatanam. It is paired with Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s sculpture, a birthday gift from her husband. “I appreciate the juxtaposition of seriousness with irreverence in his art. When deciding where to place it in the house, I positioned it beside the Tipu Sultan, as Roger’s work depicts his fall in Srirangapatna, my paternal hometown and there’s a connection right there. I’m not too fussed about how things sit together, but meaning-making is important to me. Some things can be beautiful but beyond the beauty, their meaning is important to me.”

On the adjacent wall is what she calls, “an amalgamation of the artists we love,” with artworks from disparate artists and styles, across eras finding pride of place. She further adds, “We have a lot of art, so I keep changing it. I like to enjoy the things that we have. Paul keeps buying books. So just two months ago I put up the bookshelf near the dining table as a necessity, but I love it!” While for most, a blank wall would perhaps be the best backdrop for a bookshelf with antique volumes, for Pavitra it beckoned for more. “The privilege of my role as design director of Asian Paints is having access to the world of Nilaya by Asian Paints and everything that they do. Asian Paints is a distributor of Pierre Frey in India and I was fixated on Au Bord Du Lac, a stunning old archival wallpaper. It’s an old European textile. It is naturally aged with hints of sepia-tinted gold,” she explains.

While the home’s character is shaped by curious finds and eclectic furniture, its soul finds expression in the way Pavitra imbues it, honing it like a chapter in a cherished novel in the making. Shared by six adults, the space reflects cohesion. But if you see the bedrooms, they are radically different. “I love bedrooms that are essentially serene but also have colour. Out of the four bedrooms, two are essentially white and two are full of colour,” she says. One of the rooms is clad in tiger-printed wallpaper while another room wears a wallpaper that draws from Indonesian batik textiles, illustrated with birds of paradise motifs. All the wallpapers are developed in her studio alongside pieces accumulated over the years. It’s a precious space. But not in a touch-me-not way. Pavitra’s home overflows with vitality, yet not in excess. Another key aspect to her language is her use of textile, what she calls her “whole reason to exist.” The dining table runner is an Ethiopian men’s shawl. In one bedroom, is an old indigo test fabric from Japan, used to test printing blocks before the final production that Pavitra repurposed. A white bedroom comes alive by virtue of an African Kuba. Pavitra explains, “Handcrafted textiles have shared human experiences, drawing inspiration from nature, cultural forms and the colours of our surroundings. This commonality allows everything to harmonise effortlessly and I enjoy mixing them together without overthinking it.”

Although her process seems rather intuitive, Pavitra is also quick to counter the idea. “It’s a myth that a designer knows exactly what they want to do with their home from day one. People evolve and homes evolve along with them and sometimes you need to grow into your home,” she asserts. When she acquired their home, they were two cookie-cutter apartments combined into one. The challenge was to create intimacy, a home that opens itself up in pockets. Before she moved in with Paul, she lived in a different apartment in the same building. That house, she says, “Was more organic, I went with my gut and natural inclinations compared to the current home. This home is deliberately layered. That home had a ferocious blue wall that I loved. But when we moved here and we converted it into a guest suite, I think I wanted to take it in a slightly softer direction, challenge myself. The shade Dhund by Asian Paints caught my eye, it’s a beautiful, indescribable purple-grey. Sometimes, the names of colours draw you in. Dhund evoked images of a house in the monsoon, and I knew it was the perfect colour.”

Though she is still partial to blue. “I always add a bit of blue to my spaces, it just brings the temperature down,” reveals Pavitra. And her Instagram handle @teaonthebluesofa is also emblematic of the same. And many other metaphors. “Almost 20 years ago, when I was a young mother, I worked from a blue sofa in my bedroom, that was my office. And I read a book which was called Tea on the Blue Sofa (by Natasha Illum Berg), the story of a woman in Africa. And I adopted it. That’s the story behind Tea on the Blue Sofa which is literally what I did as I juggled roles between being a mom and my career,” she reminisces. A person has many homes in their lifetime, each special in their own way. “Much of what inhabits my home has been part of my life for many, many years, reflecting our journey of how we’ve come together, how we’ve brought elements from his past and my past and things that we hold dear. I’ve had a rich life and had the opportunity to fill it with so many memories and special things that bring me a lot of joy,” she signs off.