This article was posted in The Hindu. You can find the original article here.
Profiling an old home in the city that have been converted into a creative space
“I used to play between the trees as a kid. They were later cut down to make space for the jewellery store in front. Fruit trees too were plenty. Papaya, sapota, guava,coconut, pomegranate and jamun. Most are gone now. We had to cement the backyard to make a car park.” Janaki Badrinath, Director of Kota Jewellery at Tatabad, is in a nostalgic mood. Bright yellow flowers and climbers sway through the metallic grills of a window behind her. We are in her jewellery store, which once was her house.
“This building, constructed in the 1960s, belonged to Ganapathi Iyer, before my father, K.R Loganathan bought in 1980. The National Coffee Board had its office here. We later turned it into our home. I was then just 12 years old.” Constructed in an 18-cent plot, the building had five bedrooms and “a number of halls that which had different names like the TV room or the green room because it was painted in that colour. My father made some renovations around the time of my marriage. He changed the mosaic flooring to tiles in some rooms.”
Badrinath lived here till 2006 when the property was partitioned. Four years ago, she started Kota Jewellery in the rear portion. “The store in front belongs to my brother-in-law.” Badrinath says that, even when they renovated the building, most of it was preserved. “We had to knock off a wall to make the place more accessible as we changed the entrance”, says Badri Kota, MD of Kota Jewellers. “This used to be a window,” he says, showing me a cupboard, “we changed it into a display cupboard for the jewellery.”
The furniture in the store is also more than a century old. “Most of it was handed down to through generations. This chair belonged to my grandfather, who was a jeweller. A big swing in the centre serves as a display counter. It used to be a bench. We attached metallic chains to the corners and hung it.” They have also added pieces collected during their travel. Kota shows off a piece that he bought in Bali and altered to display jewellery.
The store has four rooms — where they sell gold, diamond, platinum, semi-precious stones, and silver — a store and kitchen. “The kitchen and the store are almost untouched. We use the kitchen to make coffee and tea,” says Badrinath.
Kota and Badrinath lead me upstairs through an old staircase with mosaic flooring. It opens to a big hall, which is dimly lit. A wooden door carved with floral patterns opens into a store room. “This used to be my mother’s pooja room,” says Badrinath. The in-house artisans also work from a room on the first floor. I ask Badrinath how she feels about converting her house into a store. “I am happy. We made the best out of it,” she says. “It still holds its old charm and looks beautiful.” Kota plans to start art classes in the unused space but that is still some time away.
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