Skip to main content

The Zen of Shifting Home


If I have not informed you earlier, I have moved out of Pasir Ris. The primary motive was to get closer to Trisha’s school. The other objectives include sniffing, if not rejoicing, some finer things in life. You know, like most filial Eastern men, I had dedicated half my life for others. So I shall make my ‘fine list’ now before its time to make the ‘bucket list’ soon. This house was love at first sight and my mind refused to even flirt with the other choices. Its bigger, brighter, windier, has sea views AND fits my thin wallet. After all, finesse is directly proportional to how much one can pay through his nose.

So we bought this house and the rest of the story is me fulfilling my artistic quest. I drew inspirations from cubism, Zen interior design and minimalism. Cubism is Picasso’s post modern response to breaking traditional patterns in painting. It is simplification of natural forms into cubes, cylinders, spheres, and cones (And there is a lot more to it. Beer session topic!). I have taken cubes from that list. You might notice the cubes everywhere – even in the electrical light on the beam and the bath mixer (sorry for the low quality photo there). Sujatha was very agitated with my obsession to cubes but she was given very little chance to unsettle me on this.

Zen interior is to give a soothing tranquility. This can be achieved with reduced color palettes, clear spaces, reduced clutter and a harmonious furnishing. Minimalism is stripping it down to fundamentals. Nothing ‘bling’, nothing that grabs attention or tries to impress. As you can see, I have restrained from using more than 3 colors and filling up the wall and space with things. It was a happy shopping, spending and managing the contractor not to disturb the concept. You may click the pictures to see them big.


But coming to the moving phase… man, that made me cough bricks. And that is where I learned a great spiritual lesson about life. Next post is on that.

Comments

  1. Nice house...

    Why is the kitchen crocked.. the contractor forgot to use his leveling tool?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yea, its designed that way. You better take some training from NASA before you come visiting us.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful. I like how you designed and decorated it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. that's a nice condo raja. Good choice - Ram

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Pam, Ram and Babul. Visit us sometime :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Date - Part 1

“Good Morning. How is everything? Did you manage to have an early breakfast date with yourself?” I was on the bed in a hotel room in Jakarta when that SMS woke me up. I only managed to get a very few hours of sleep that night. Even in that, my mind went churning non-stop on some meaningless, unconnected things. I was literally aware of all that turmoil in the half sleep, twisting and tossing through it. Back to the SMS. All the SMS I get usually are with a single consistent purpose - my colleagues trying to find my whereabouts. Note - none of them is a hot babe. (This is altogether a different topic - how come no hot chick in this whole damn world manages to become an IT architect!!) Oh, for a change, I do occasionally get some irritating marketing campaigns. So, it is not a wonder that this message sprang me awake like a Maasai Warrior. (Maasai are an African tribe famous for their ability to rise from the deepest sleep to a state of total combat readiness in a matter of seconds)...

Reboot the Universe - Part 1

Let me warn you first. This is going to be a damn serious reading. I have access to a certain secret button. The button that reboots the Universe! At this point, if you are my wife or anyone else that doesn’t take me seriously, you better quit reading. If you are chatty Praful, naughty Babul, genius-explored Thakkali, genius-unexplored Hendry I, genius-recently-explored Henry A, Hilarious K, Cy - a big Welcome! If you are a stranger here, you have beaten an odd of 2,317,563,890,001 : 1 in hitting an intelligent blog. Congrats! If you are me, you are really sexy, sensational, cool, etc etc and btw finish writing this fast. It all started when she settled in the Starbucks at 11AM, Latitude14° 35’ N and Longitude 120° 57E. It was a working day. Hush, don’t ask. She is random. Dazzlingly random. And she needs to be in random places to get into her genius moments. But that crumby place was so noisy that she had to plead God’s help. Then she suddenly realized (or over heard from the noise...

The Great Indian Divide - Part 1

Have you combed an Indian metro recently? What struck you as the blinding flash of the obvious? The shining India? AND also in a few meters, a POOR nation caught in the slip stream of capitalism? An economic divide ? AND hence a cultural divide ? In short, did you notice the Class Conflict ? It’s the same class conflict or “alienation” that Karl Marx saw in the late 1800s. This has been a cause of my reluctance to move back to India. Because common sense and history tells that such class conflicts will result in social unrest and ugly revolutions as small as “mangalore bar attacks” (google it) to something as catastrophic as the French Revolution. What is the cause for this great Indian divide? The answer is “Knowledge Economy” and the “Knowledge Workers”. Let me dummify these terms first. Think of a line (like the poverty line) called the machine line . You are above the machine line if machines are your slaves. For example, a biotechnologist or a banker who uses a computer to get hi...