A designer’s Delhi flat of textiles and treasures

After many such adventures, Vidush, head textile designer at Manan Design, landed in the homeliest rental: a ground-floor flat with a kitchen that instantly felt perfect, a dining area large enough to host all his friends without scraping elbows, and the promise of sun. He shares the space with a roommate who gives him free rein over the décor and, in return, tends to the neighbourhood cats, keeping bowls filled as they also make themselves at home. The false ceiling, ubiquitous in Delhi rentals, was absent and that was decisive. He loathes them.

Even as a boy, he thus could tell Patola from Ikkat. He would pore over magazines, walk through fairs and exhibitions with his mother and grandmother, noticing patterns, textures, colours, and sometimes even be teased for it. When he moved from Mangalore to start living on his own, he took with him the trunks first. Hand-painted, heavy, full of family. His great-grandfather’s clock came along too, carrying its time. Every visit home added more: tables, chairs, crockery, textiles. “The family furniture has traveled north, west, and south. That black chair in my living room, for instance—it was my grandmother’s. It’s been to Jaipur, Calcutta, Bombay, Bangalore, Mangalore, and now, Delhi,” says the designer, who also has what he calls object memory. A lamp from his childhood, a curio long forgotten, he remembers these objects suddenly and rings up his mother, asking where it has gone, nudging at stories that belong to him as much as to the objects themselves.

The sewing machine turned console table, the batik printed bedsheets, block printed curtains and applique cushions makes the home feel as if it belonged in a Kodak roll from the 90s. “Visit exhibitions that bring together weavers from different states. Go to the government emporiums, you would be amazed at the treasures hiding in plain sight,” is his advice to anyone drawn to his style or doubts they still exist outside memory. He talks about a black-and-red batik sheet he picked up at a pre-Pujo sale at the Madhya Pradesh Emporium. “Look at it. How could anyone just pass it by? If you’re in Delhi, run to Delhi Haat or Dastkaar. Take a big empty tote, of course.” This is his retail therapy, the small way he lifts himself on days he feels flat. “You don’t need much. I got a stunning cushion cover recently for thirty-two rupees!” He smiles. “I love this city.”

In a home where every detail is curated, he realised one room could be left to the gentle anarchy of TV and lounging. This room came into being after a flatmate moved out. He has since discovered how perfect it is. A separate room where mess is allowed, where his obsession with keeping the common areas tidy doesn’t have to fight with the rest of the apartment.

Among his most treasured objects are those inherited from his grandmother: an oil painting of roses she painted, once suspended in the archway of their childhood home. Her signature remains, delicate and exact. He likes it for the way it hints at her obsession with arranging flowers, the little quiet compulsions that shape a life, ones he finds himself repeating here, decades later. Her Baluchari scarf, framed in the living room, catching the glare from the window, refusing to be photographed. He learned by watching her, Ikebana, the careful art of arranging flowers, and he carries that lesson into everything he does: placing objects on shelves, laying out furniture. It is all part of the same inheritance, a way of paying attention that turns living into a kind of flower arrangement, season into season.

All images by Menty Jamir