Hi Aidy, this is Sonam and welcome to my Mumbai home. Come on in. Actually, welcome back. This is the second time we're doing this.
So this is my little meeting room, my desk. It doesn't usually have these kind of flowers and all on it. But I obviously lit up my room and my house a little bit because you guys are like coming and I just wanted to look nice. You see those glass paintings, these are all like when China was trading with the Mughal rulers at that point, they used to come and do these little Chinese glass paintings of the Mughals.
Very few queens and princesses were painted. And these are all the Chinese glass paintings that I have of that time which I thought was really beautiful. This is a Pichwai. A Pichwai is a craft that is in India which I'm sure everybody knows about. And this is all painted on a fabric.
So everything that I have in this house is kind of collected over time and I don't want to spend too much time in each room because I can go on and on talking about the room. So welcome to my living room. This is where I do the most entertaining and hanging out and where all my friends come. This is one of my favorite rooms that I've ever lived in. It's everything.
It's like all my fantasies come to life. The reason I went so Indian and so maximalist, I just wanted a lot of layers is because this is a very new building. I just got really overwhelmed by coming to this like very modern building and I was like, how do I make it? like nostalgic to who I am and I just went mad.
Every wall over here is hand painted. So it's very rare to find like double-heighted ceilings in flats in Mumbai and I was like really lucky to have this. We bought these Naga pieces which added the drama and accentuated these ceilings a lot and this is a piece of art that makes me really proud. This is a Jamebar shawl. It's very very old.
This was gifted to me by my mother. I use it as a throw and sometimes when I'm cold I pick it up and I put it around me. It's like the ultimate luxury.
That's my bar where all the fun stuff happens. Do you guys want to drink in the middle of the day? Okay.
This is actually an old Indian Balti or in translation it's a bucket. These Baltis were used to like basically have a bath with. So I use it as a vase in the house and I kind of love it. I love hosting and feeding people. I think it's like the North Indian in me who likes to just like, I love feeding people, I love having people over.
This was something that I've always wanted in every home, where the dining and the kitchen is always like a big focus of mine. So it's always amazing. This is my little Supari box. Every time after a meal, we like pass this around.
The one thing that I love about this room, the artifact and the art, these are old tablets from Ravi Verma that they used to make the lithographs out of, like little prints out of. Oh, my favorite piece actually was gifted to me by Chikki Doshi or like everybody knows, Mahendra Doshi. He made this for my little baby Vayu and I love this. This is something which is a collectible and I love Chikki. Should we go into the kitchen which is my favorite room in the whole house?
I keep saying that every room is my favorite room but this is truly my favorite room. I love coming in the kitchen a lot. I use the kitchen a lot.
I love baking. I love cooking. So this was something that was really important to me where I have a beautiful space. This room is inspired by Delft styles.
I had this artist called Shivani. I told her to put Indian flora and fauna and birds and kind of design my whole kitchen in a blue and white. I have this little like space that I love, these pocket doors.
These are all bespoke and made pottery from Bangalore. These are like these cool huts that I got made. Again, all hand-painted and handmade and all by Indian artisans.
Let's go upstairs into our private space which are our bedroom. Come on! I'm taking off my shoes because we don't wear shoes in...
upstairs in the house. So I'm barefoot from now on, guys. Like, I didn't want any part of my house that did not have design.
These lithographs were actually made during the time of the East India Company, where they... They came in and they basically drew scenes of India. And I had Vikas take inspiration from these lithos and kind of paint the staircase inspired by these lithos. So welcome to my guest bedroom.
I did this with my mother-in-law in mind because she grew up in Ajmer. And I wanted her to remember that. So I had these pomegranates and she can think about her home there. But like this is the guest room where my friends.
stay or my in-laws stay when they come to Mumbai. I want to talk about this chest. This is basically for a desk. It's a writing chest and I keep it open because it's so beautiful inside and it has this little key that makes a little bell sound which I think is beautiful. But this is just like a showpiece right now which I have in this room and I love it.
Do you want to go into my son's room? So this room was designed by Anusha Nanavati who specializes in children's rooms. So I decided to do this whole room as a jungle in color and this is painted by Vikas and everything is made of teakwood and cane.
I knew when I was making his room I wanted to get these like big animals and I picked up like this lion and this giraffe, this elephant, this like little... dog which is he calls jack was my mom's dog is jack and every night when he sleeps he's like good night giraffe good night elephant good night lion good night jack and he sits on that chair which is this like little tiny chair which my friend roshan actually designed for him kind of says vayu on it so the last space is my bedroom When we were thinking of designing this house, I remember sending my Maasi. It was in an old AD.
It was Cher's bedroom. In her bedroom, she had this like beautiful old jharoka as her headboard. And we kind of used that as a focal point of the room and we started with this headboard. And then the rest of the jharoka is to cover my TV because I don't like to see TVs.
So we shut them before we go to sleep. So there's a television behind that. My gorgeous dressing table is over here. When my son falls asleep, I quickly have my dinner and I just go into my bed after obviously a hot shower and just relax.
Whatever I know about art, Whatever I know about artefacts is because of my mass area. Her only brief was to me, I want layer over layers. And I kept saying, no we can't do this, no but we can't do this. And she said, no we can do this and you will do this.
I'm not going to live here, she's going to live here. So she should be comfortable in her own space. This is not my house, it's her house.
I'm only there as a medium. So thank you for coming home, AD. I'm so glad I could show you around, and I hope you enjoyed my home. Do you want to have a cup of tea now?