Neha Bhatt visits Sushmit Bose’s home and finds that the musician put a lot of thought into designing a pleasant and practical living space for himself.
Like all Bengali men, Sushmit Bose takes his duties as a son very seriously. Having lived in sprawling bungalows and farmhouses all his life and tired of it, Bose decided to spruce up his mother’s flat in Munirka in Delhi — to make it his own as it were. “I like it less opulent,” he says, insisting that he much prefers small houses.
Bose, an urban folk singer, is often called the desi Bob Dylan for his free-flowing activist songs and gentle guitar strains. “The Guthrie gharana, that’s the style of music I practise,” he says.
His first album released way back in 1971, but it’s only since 2006 that Bose has turned to music full time, releasing two well-received albums in the two years since — Be The Change and Public Issue. Bose’s new album, Song of the Universe, will release in November and is an experiment with 12th century baul sounds.
On and off in the last few years, Bose has reworked his mother’s two-bedroom flat to turn it into a neat space so that it’s now virtually unrecognisable as the DDA flat that it once was. And while at it, he has been careful to keep both his mother’s and his own sensibilities in mind — a difficult task.
What the apartment now represents is a distinct two-fold structure, designed to be practical and suit multiple purposes with an open, pleasant ambience. “After bungalows and farmhouses, I found that living in an apartment complex is a different ballgame altogether.
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I have tried to mobilise people in this area to redo common spaces, but it hasn’t worked so far. I realised after some time that you have to do what you can yourself and change your own house however much you can,” Bose says.
It is the nooks and corners which Bose has opened out that give this apartment an edge over other cooped-up DDA flats. “When I moved in about three years ago, I started making some structural changes. I brought down the kitchen wall, making it an open space. My mother used to complain that she spent so much time in the kitchen that she was not able to interact with the family. So I placed the dining table right next to the kitchen,” he says.
Next, he attacked the tacky DDA-flat windows, enlarging them to almost double the usual size, framing them in wood and adding brown bamboo chiks as well as light cream curtains. “I love chiks for my windows and my mother likes curtains. So I said let’s have both — and it came out looking good. I would have loved to have double glazed windows though.”
The living room has a plush wooden floor, a pleasing contrast with the red-brown tiles on the edges and in the passageway which leads, on the one side, to the inner rooms and, on the other, to the terrace garden. “I have always liked wooden floors because it controls the temperature.
This one is scraped and compressed, so it is environmentally friendly,” Bose informs. As for the red tiles, Bose says “it’s washable and moreover, it reminds us of the red floor we have in Bengal”.
Bose’s living room stands out in blue and green, a colour scheme that started out as an attempt to match an old painting by family friend and artist Pranab Chakrabarty, in a similar combination of colours. Blue is also his mother’s favourite colour, and Bose brought in green to “tone down the excess of blue”. Bose is especially proud of the green wall in the living room which serves as a family album with black-and-white photographs framed all over, next to which are two neatly carved niches where antiques are displayed. A 150-year-old black trunk which Bose didn’t want to throw away is now one of his favourite pieces in the room, put to good use with a glass top.
As for the upholstery, its cotton and khadi all the way from the cushions to the spread on the divan and lamp shades. “I prefer cotton fabrics to silk which can get a bit showy,” he says. Bose’s affinity for soft lights is also obvious from the numerous lamps in all sizes strewn all over the room.
But it’s the music room that Bose has taken greatest care to design and decorate.
A maker of films and documentaries, besides being a musician and an avid reader, the small room needed to be reworked entirely to accommodate a wealth of material and provide enough space for Bose to work in. A whole wall covered with a collection of cassettes greets you near the mirrored doorway which serves to make the room seem much larger than it is.
A second wall hosts lifesize posters of some of Bose’s favourite musicians, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan, while an arrangement of his collection of acoustic guitars and baul instruments take up much of the rest of the space in the music room. Bose’s favourite piece in the room — a trunk similar to the one placed in the living room — sits by his bed, while a beautiful old sarangi showpiece hangs by the side in a corner.
What makes the room an all-in-one facility for Bose are the wooden cupboard insets he has put in to store his numerous books, film tapes and music. “I do wish this room was big enough for me to record in. I have not sound-proofed it because I love the sights and sounds that come in through the windows.” And, of course, for a folk singer, these are very important.
“I love corners. In this house, I have tried to make use of each corner to increase utility and to do justice to pieces collected over the years,” he says.
