Green and red marvel

It will have to remain a mystery. No one knows who built that beautiful Baker model house in the insides of Vattiyoorkavu, in Thiruvananthapuram, where actor-dancer Devi Ajith lives. Devi was only a girl then, her brother also too young to know those details. Everything was taken care of by Kochachan, Devi's uncle Hareendra Kumar, who is no more, she says. So the house with its green and red exteriors stays there as a beautiful piece of memory, of an uncle, of an unknown architect, of the childhood years that Devi spent.

Devi with her family.

"It is 30 years old, this house. I have been here as a schoolgirl and feel very attached to the place. I could just sit on this couch and curl up to sleep," she says affectionately, sitting on the said couch in her long living room. When it was her turn, Devi moved around this and that, and made the interiors pretty. There's still more stuff to go, she says. Like the diwan now covered in red. But with all the furniture and a few antiques in corners, the room still looks spacious, no crammed objects that modern houses are known for. "Nannu doesn't like it here," Devi says and her daughter frowns. Nandana and Devi had been living in Chennai before. Both mother's and daughter's younger photos are on a corner of the room, where the staircase begins. There is also the photo of Devi's late husband, Ajith. 

Devi’s art work.

There is an old world charm about the house - in the wooden railings of the stairs, the long rooms, the dining space within the kitchen. "That's the temporary kitchen where no one cooks. Real cooking takes place in an inside kitchen," she says and promptly, Vijayamma, an old maid, steps out of it, carrying lunch dishes. Hidden between the living and dining rooms are three doors, leading to three bedrooms. The one with a bright yellow wall belongs to Devi's parents. Another, at the end of the house, came later, and Nandana uses it now. This room looks a world apart from the rest of the house, with its modern character. A beautiful blue wall is on one side, and Nandana's big teddy bear takes up a corner. A painting is in the room. There are scattered paintings in the rest of the house too, most of them gifted by friends of the family. An art work made of dried leaves by Devi as a schoolgirl still stays framed on a wall.

In the upper floor, it is Devi's room and a room for all the many, many books her professor parents had collected. They come in an auto rickshaw as we speak, from the family-run school nearby. V. Ramachandran Nair and S. Lalithambika sit on the couch with the daughter and the granddaughter and pose for a photo.