Abhilasha Ojha visits Sminu Jindal’s home and comes away charmed by the experience.
A s we enter the meditation room that Sminu Jindal, managing director, Jindal Saw, has created next to her terrace garden, it’s hard not to gape at the ceiling from the centre of which rises a gold-leaf clad pyramid! Jindal is a believer in what is now known as, simply, “pyramid vaastu”, which postulates that the pyramid shape channels cosmic energies and is thus beneficial to meditate under.
Whether or not one believes in the theory, the sunlight streaming in gently through the apex of the pyramid — covered by a single, clear quartz piece — in Jindal’s room is calming indeed. So when she says, “It’s one of my favourite spaces in this house,” it is easy to see why.
The meditation room is a sanctuary of sorts. Jindal escapes to this to clear her mind and relax at the end of each day. The space is equipped to provide various therapies too — from crystal to colour. Neatly placed on glass shelves in the room are, in fact, different types of crystals — small and big — most of them with healing properties.
A working woman, a doting mother of two adorable toddlers, a wife and daughter-in-law, Jindal happily balances all these diverse roles and ensures that, at the same time, her home is never neglected. When we enter the spacious house, the first thing that we notice is Jindal’s love for nature, for indigenous crafts, zany knickknacks and limited edition Murano glass pieces. But what strikes us most is the expertise with which all elements come together to create an extraordinary space.
“This is what I am,” says Jindal thoughtfully, “My home is me and exudes my personality.” In her own words, each and every piece in her house has a sentiment attached to it. Take the collection of some imitation “Faberge” eggs that rest in the living room. One of the pieces is what Jindal gifted her sons on a recent family trip abroad. You open the jewelled egg to find that characters from The Lion King lie inside! “I wanted them to have a sense of family bonding and couldn’t think of gifting them anything better,” laughs Jindal.
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There’s no demarcation between the dining hall and the living area either. A Tanjore-syle Balaji rests near the dining area and elements from the West and East happily coexist: Take, for example, the table with a typical Kashmiri-style carving in walnut wood. It rests close to a limited edition Murano side table in gold and platinum.
Jindal picked this up recently on her vacation to Italy. And just when one feels that a formal look sets the tone for the living room, we are enraptured by an object that clearly is the centre of attraction, yet completely at odds with the ultra-elegance of the space: Ceramic pieces of different shapes and sizes are strung together casually on a bamboo beam and hung on one of the windows like a wind chime — with the backdrop being provided by vast amounts of greenery outside.
One of the central features of the Jindal home, which immediately catches our attention, is an installation in stainless steel made by artist Vibhor Sogani. It finds pride of place on the wall along the main staircase. The installation takes the form of a honeycomb — complete with honeybees — done in gold finish.
While Sogani’s art is the connecting element that takes us from the ground to the first floor, Jindal points out some other “priceless” pieces too in this space. A wall on the first floor, along the staircase, has been devoted to her children’s drawings.
“Whatever my children doodle, whatever they paint and draw, I get collages made of their works and get these framed,” she says. From a distance, her kids’ works looks like an emerging art form, one that exudes colour, abstract patterns and more.
Jindal’s own bedroom, in fact, has a couple of paintings in two disparate elements fused together — gold and glass. These are limited edition paintings from Murano. “Very often, the glass breaks in the process of doing these paintings. Clearly, the final painting is a feat accomplished,” she adds.
When she moved back from the US to India, her home (“most of my discussions with the architect were done over the phone”), says Jindal, was not in the best of shapes.
“I love natural light streaming in from every nook and corner of my home and that was possible only if I could have windows rising from the ground level and reaching the ceiling,” she points out.
What she also insisted on was the use of blinds — and not curtains — to emphasise the space. Jindal also likes splashes of colour and that’s what one finds in different areas of her home. In the “waiting area” is a single quartz Ganesha idol, weighing 82 kg, that rests on a regular tree trunk polished in gold leaf. The surface reflects a red colour from the opposite wall covered by wallpaper.
Even the furniture is a riot of colour: From bright red couches to circular loungers in green. The study area, by the way, has a canary yellow couch on which Jindal has used a Gujarati mirror-work wall hanging as a throw! The study, otherwise full of beechwood furniture, also has a splash of bright blue on the shelves. Besides, this is one space, where you get to see a very different side to Jindal: a little girl at heart, still buying miniature tea sets, picnic baskets, dolls, music boxes et al, all of which have been placed in different sections of her study.
When we walk back after a leisurely tour of Jindal’s home, we are smiling.
Considering all the elements that make it up, the home is full of stories and we’ve walked away with some of them. Many are about a woman who, despite being physically challenged, defines grit and determination. Her home is strong, beautiful and welcoming, just like her.
