CONTEMPORARY HOUSE FOR LIVING

She was a well known and successful artist, he was a colourful and well known architect.   I was to have tea with her and look at her house, as an example of contemporary architecture.  She and her husband had collected antique features from houses in the Old City and had them incorporated into a modern structure....

I gave the address to the driver, knowing that it would take a long time to find the house in the warren of streets.  We drove down one lane after another without any luck - in desperation, seeing a man on a street corner, we stopped to ask directions for the umpteenth time - to my surprise he wore a cap with a slogan in bright red,  saying "I love Jerusalem"!  Just another of the non-secqueters which enliven a day in India.

The artist's paintings are filled with stoical women, locked into their own private world of suffering, who look out at the world uncompromisingly.  They are set within an easily accessible pattern of design and colour and one can observe them from this more palatable vantage point.  Her style is unchanging and each painting presents a variation on this theme - an unquestioning balance - which seems to be the crux of life in India.

The architect had cleverly used this concept in his design for contemporary living.  The antique features of wooden cantilevers, corbels, balconies and staircases from a bygone age, had been placed within a modern framework of exposed brickwork which was used to create its own rhythm of patterns.  The old idea of courtyards letting in light and air had been used to enhance the main living space and the bedrooms upstairs, too, had their own balconies which looked across at each other and overlooked the main courtyard.  With a canopy of green trees, this was an oasis for contemporary living, a secluded corner in a hot and dusty city.