It is an undestatement to say that celebrity DJ Rashmi Kakkar's new designer
home is a celebration of minimalist modernity. For it is much more than that. It
is a statement of contextual clarity, and traditional purity. Rashmi herself
clad in an all glass see through nightie greeted us at the glazed entrance
looking radiant against the Kerala palm placed with a nonchalant ease against a
backdrop of carelessly strewn children from her first marriage. The
compositional clarity of the entrance itself was striking. What was inside and
what was outside, was delineated with deliberate cold conviction. And yet, in
many ways the entrance also reflected the duality of this side and that side in
a manner that was both structural and confrontational. Structural because of the
heavy almost wooden door placed deliberately between the two contrasting spatial
realms. Confrontational because of the ease with which Rashmi stood as a
distillation of the human condition - a fleshy construct, exposed, vulnerable
and against the profusion of plant life, almost irredeemably provocative.
Symbolically, out of context, the imitation Mahogany sofa formed a gravitational
focus to the Bloplast chairs arranged off-centre to suggest the fragility of
urban life. Given to underdeveloped sociological instinct, it could easily have
led to programmatic misunderstanding and hence spatial and visual embarassement.
But the interior designer was rightfully exercising his or her prerogative to
determine the positive constraints of the Genus Loci. In so doing, the floor had
been cleverly placed directly on the ground. Yet, it was clever without being
smart, arrogant without a hint of self-righteousness. Further in, the
juxtapositions got more violent. A period center table, part Bolivian, part
Chinese, was turned at an angle to suggest an attitude of psychological
disorientation and create a playful schaema that crossed conventional
ornamentation bounds and just lay there mocking 'Try me, you bastard, just try
me.' Fooled into believing that we were only pawns in this game of simulated
multifunctionality, we headed unknowingly into the lyrical cadences of the
dining area, where the ordinary needs of a construction science had met their
match in a metaphysical balance of such complexity that it was hard to separate
the delicate nuances from the standard subtleties. For there, in the midst of
the room, topped by a table cloth generously stained by dal was a metaphor so
utterly contemporary and volumetric, that it was hard not to be fooled into
corruptive design paradox. Directly behind, was an old fridge, shaking
vigorously in the summer heat, and through its actions making it abundantly
clear that the deeper structure of the interior professes fundamental linkages
to contemporary contradictions inherent in the ambiguity between barbaric
functionality and emotive traditionalism, both of which were very close to
Rashmi Kakar's heart. She removed her glass dress for fear of compositional
disparity and we proceeded into the bedroom.
- By Our Glib Reporter
