House of Curves

From the entrance of the house, through the interiors, TVK Raman keeps asking, “Really, is it worth featuring?” But then he agrees how, 14 or so years ago, when the house got built, he wanted it different and not be a run-in-the-mill house you see everywhere. “Right,” he asks Sathi, his wife, who keeps a wonderful green garden in the front yard. Raman and Sathi got their wish when their architect — late Sanjeev Kumar — took it upon himself to put curves in every part of the house he could think of — the walls, the windows and doors, the shelves, and arched openings and a really spiral staircase. So ‘Sree’ stands as one simple curvy house in Chalakuzhy Road, Thiruvananthapuram.

“Sanjeev would listen to our suggestions too. I told him it had to be different, cost-effective, and with no ornamentations,” Raman says. So when you look around, you don't find anything fancy, but keep getting lost in the curves. “These grills that you see are also Sanjeev's trademark,” Raman points to a partition separating the living room from the dining. The curves allow extra spaces that come a few steps below the main rooms. The living room, for instance, has steps leading to a small space beneath the staircase to keep shoe racks and stuff. The dining hall also ends with an arch opening to a tiny space beneath which has miscellaneous household items.

What's most striking is the curvy door that leads to a bedroom next to the living-dining. “He loves curves,”Raman says of his architect friend. The master bedroom on the opposite side, however, has few curves in it. It’s simple, straightforward, with a dressing and a bath. The kitchen is kept cute by Sathi, a small table with four chairs in the middle of it. “We don't really eat here, it's more to sit and cut things,” Raman laughs.

The rooms upstairs are less used. It’s meant for their son who lives away. It begins with a living space with furniture that has large hooks on the ends, which Raman says he picked up to match the rest of the curves in the house. Dolls of his grandchildren are spread across the chairs, adding life to the otherwise little used space. Two doors open to two terraces, and two others to two bedrooms. In between, you again find extra spaces used to dump less used domestic items.

On the terrace, you find a creeper stretching itself from the garden below. “That's all Sathi's work,” says a proud Raman. “Everything in this house belongs to her, including me,” he smiles.