An old dream, a new purpose, persistence and resolve. Saloni Puri’s house in the hills tells her that life’s greatest pleasures are in its unbought moments.
I don’t know how and when the idea of a home in the hills became such an integral part of me”, says New Delhi -based film critic, writer and filmmaker Saloni Puri. Perhaps the desire had its genesis in her childhood, from her days at the stone and pinewood Ramnee (St Mary’s boarding school in Nainital). Or in memories of family holidays spent in and around Nainital, where her parents would hire a cottage in the higher regions, large enough to accommodate the extended family. In quaintly named stone houses with wooden gables and tin roofs, the Puri family would gather to cook, keep house and enjoy the summer.
But there was never a Grand Plan to build a home in the hills. Photographer husband Rohit Chawla had built a home in Goa, and though she loves going there, “our geographical affinities differ and I’ve always been drawn to the mountains. This, I believe, was a combination of serendipity, destiny and luck”.
On one of her visits to Kumaon, Puri chanced upon Jilling Estate, a homestay owned by Steve Lal. One of her friends from Mumbai had hired a cottage on Lal’s estate and lived there for a year. Puri visited often to help her to settle in. The cottage was at the edge of a 50-acre protected forest full of chestnut, rhododendron and pine trees. Families of raucous green parrots, langurs and spotted deer roamed undisturbed. “I would take endless walks and stray into orchards of plums, apricots and apples, in early summer there would be cabbages, potatoes and peas growing in near wild abandon”. On one of these rambling walks her guide was a Jilling native, Deepak Joshi. “Soon he and I were talking of water harvesting, and solar power, garbage recycling and growing strawberries. I had found a friend and mentor.”
One of Puri’s stays at Jilling estate happened to coincide with the visit of some people from Mumbai who wanted to buy cheap land in Kumaon , build houses, and then sell them to city-dwellers looking for homes in the hills. Puri went along on one of their land-hunting trips, at the time an ‘uninterested party’. Deepak Joshi showed the Mumbaikars several tracts of land around Jilling. But nothing struck their fancy. As the day ended, remembers Puri, they came to a small plot almost hidden behind a huge copse of apple trees. It did not find favour, it was not big enough, had an incline and only a small part of it was flat. “As they quibbled over the semantics and price, I stood gazing out over the top of the ledge at the view. The sun was setting on the green mountains, there was Nanda Devi in the distance, and the air was filled with the smell of pine and plums. I sat down in the grass and remember saying to myself — this is it.”
It is not easy to build a house on top of a hill with no motorable road. But Puri’s first priority was the design. She chose an architect who had built houses in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It was war, she recollects. “He kept making the windows small and I kept enlarging them. He would put in doors and I would remove them. He would enclose balconies and I would open them out.” She soon realised she would have to settle for a structural drawing (for earthquake-proofing and weather resistance) and work on the rest on her own. As it turned out, Deepak Joshi had built a small cottage for a farmer in the vicinity and Puri was impressed with his work, which was “nothing fancy, but sturdy and neat, enough to make me throw in my lot with him,” says Puri, “and we began work”.
Local artisans were gathered from neighbouring villages. First the hill had to be dug and carved out. Stone retaining walls were built and as they dug deep into the ridge, a warm golden stone emerged. This became the material for the major part of the house. To avoid cement and bricks as much as possible, they concocted a sand, mud and lime mixture to hold the hand-hewn stone blocks together. They also began to buy and season logs. For months, donkeys laden with sand, gravel and logs would climb the half-hour incline from the road to the site. People from the village were around to inspect and give free advice on plumbing, fireplaces and roofs. “Rohit, busy with his work in Delhi, had no clue what I was up to,” Puri says. “Every time I would say I had to visit Jilling he would ask, isn’t it done yet?”
The task was far from easy. Large sheets of thick glass for the conservatory had to be carried up by pony. The roof over the balcony was not wide enough, it would let the rain in; a new one had to be laid. The structural plan did not include plumbing and electricals, so Puri improvised. The water was drawn from a nearby spring and long pipes were laid by the Nepali labourers who sang rousingly as they hefted the pipes along the hillside. For water harvesting, tin pipes leading to a single underground tank were smelted along all roof edges. Puri worked out an open internal staircase, which allowed uninterrupted space from one end of the house to the other.
For flooring, the original stone felt wonderful underfoot. So they filled in the cracks, polished the surface and left it bare. It requires very little maintenance, says Puri. Fireplaces were put into every room, windows cut into rooftops, gables of pine left exposed. A carpenter from Ranikhet came to stay in the outhouse: “He was a master craftsman who handcrafted every latch, every switch, every curtain rod, window, door and cupboard from pure pine.”
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It was a tedious process, getting each brick and log cut and shaped on site. It took two years for the roof to be laid. It was finished just before the monsoon. Puri’s worries were laid to rest, as the tin-and-pine roof and stone walls withstood well. Clouds flitted in through the windows, rested on the windowsills and surrounded the house.
The house is now a year old, filled with things Puri loves — her grandfather’s Burma teak roll-top desk, English blue pottery filled with red rhododendron blooms, her mother’s Mikasa crockery with its wildflower pattern lending character to an open shelf. What about city comforts? “After resisting for a while, I gave in to a digital TV connection, Wi-fi, Bose speakers, DVD players…”
But most of her time is spent on the house and garden itself, as people drop in unannounced, village children play badminton in the garden and romp with her dogs Jaan and Jiah. Gifts of cabbages, gourds, pumpkins and giant cucumbers have been left at the door, pahari meals and bunches of wildflowers often come knocking. Life’s greatest joys are, after all, in the unbought moments.
(As told to Elizabeth Eapen)
