His green oasis

Nahushraj’s home in Kanakapura Road makes one believe that a perfect abode doesn’t necessarily have to be steeped in modern, luxurious elements. A lot of greenery and natural design can work wonders, learns Deepika Nidige

Tucked away in the narrow bylanes of a small locality called Palmsprings Layout, off the hustle and bustle of Kanakapura Road, is a house that many in the City would yearn to call their own. Built on a sprawling plot of 60x40 square foot, ‘Vasishta’, the home, belongs to a 78-year-old psychologist Nahushraj. Prima facie, one would assume that this was what an urbanite bought on the outskirts for a throwaway price and then built up on it. However, only when you delve a little deeper do you realise that this home has a slightly different and poignant story to tell.

It was the year 2001, when Nahushraj was mired in work and his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctors had given her a year or so, before she would succumb. “We were living in a rented home. And you know how women always say they want their own home. So, I decided to build one for her,” he gives me the background. To construct a house in the plot that they had owned for a while, he hired an architect — K Jaisim (founder of Fountainhead Architecture, Bengaluru) and the outcome at the end of a mere eight months was something beautiful — that his wife lived to see, although for a short time.

Inviting spaces

The house looks like it is straight out of a children’s comic book with painted coconut trees outside the home, a pyramidical roof and plenty of greenery. Why, even the entrance is beneath a canopy of bright pink bougainvillea, interspersed with some jasmine and rose creepers, concealing a beehive. With around 30-40 varieties of plants around the house that look so beckoning, the door, incidentally, is preceeded by a rather cheeky sign that says: “Everybody that comes to our house makes us happy — some when they enter; some when they leave!”

And there is a reason why this is placed here. “When we first moved in here, a lot of people would come in under the pretext of acquainting, but would actually want to see what was so different about our home. And after a while, some of them would just come in and say, ‘I’ve come to see the house’. That’s when we got a little miffed and decided to place this board,” chuckles the septuagenarian.

But why would all these people want to see the house? For one, it is nothing like your ordinary home, where you try and maximise carpet area, compromising on light, ventilation etc. The roof has been made of a special variety of interlocking terracotta tiles, that keep the house cooler by four to five degrees as compared to the outside temperature. One barely needs to use a fan or an air conditioner in here.

And as we walk into the living room, I can feel the coolness (and at the same time, warmth) of the home that comes with it. I am seated in the living room, with furniture that hasn’t been replaced in 15 years, and yet looks brand new. Amidst souvenirs from abroad, knick-knacks and potpourri, is a music system and about 300 cassettes from days of yore! It must be a delight sitting there, looking at the indoor plants basking in sunlight, that falls delicately on them through the window from the roof.

A house needn’t have several stories or a swimming pool to be a ‘cool’ home. Built entirely on the ground floor, it is spacious, inviting and calm. One particularly interesting part of the home is the small area that has been portioned off from the dining room. What used to be a lawn, has been incorporated into the interiors. Now, here lies a veena that is about 250 years old and used to belong to Nahushraj’s mother.

The home has a rich, luxurious feel to it, but one might be surprised to know that it was built with a modest budget of Rs 20 lakh. All the windows are made of aluminium and the doors from pressed wood sourced from Kerala. Even the almirah, made of steel, were personalised for the homeowners. The home is extremely disabled- and senior citizen-friendly, in that there are no thresholds anywhere in the house.

Having been built on what used to be a coconut plantation, parts of the walls in the house have been adjusted so as to accommodate the trees, instead of cutting them down. Even the trees in and around the house have turned into homes for birds. Sometimes, these avian visitors get inside the house, mistaking the glass in the roof to be the sky! And during the night, moonlight shines in, nice and bright, through the toughened glass, brightening the Bethamcherla tiles that the floor has been laid with.

It would feel wonderful to come back to a home like this after a long and weary day. Or as Nahushraj likes to think “a luxurious home is not about five storeys or an LCD TV, it’s about being one with nature, friendly and welcoming.”