Where angels fear to tread

A pair of gigantic golden elephants greeted me as I walked in. The hostess smiled warmly as she led me to a large wooden divan encrusted with brightly coloured gems and stones. I perched myself rather gingerly, on the edge, mortified I might nudge off a stone or two. Eventually I mustered enough courage to settle in a little deeper, only to be poked in quite the wrong place with sequins from the exquisitely embroidered cushions!

My eyes swept around, rather reverentially, taking in two graceful nymphs doing a Namaste, elegantly holding up the lamp shades. My saucer-wide eyes fell on two large tusks, rising royally from somewhere behind the sofa, an ornate clock hanging rather alarmingly from the tip of the tusks. The Burmese teak coffee table had a few carefully strewn glossy books (on the latest fad of the times…India and its heritage, what else!) which I am sure nobody ever turned a page of!

No, I was not in a hotel lobby, but was visiting an old buddy who, by the look of his horde of elephants and arty paintings, had certainly spent some quality time on the interiors of his home.

These are times when I long with a rather musty old fashioned nostalgia for the days when a house used to a home…and not dressed up like the presidential suite in a star hotel, or sometimes even like a Salarjung! Those were the days when one could plunk onto the well-worn comfy sofa with a steaming cup of coffee, safe in the knowledge that no gem or sequin would nudge any vulnerable spot and nonchalantly dangle one’s feet over the sides without the dread of demolishing a marble nymph or two. One could saunter through the home quite at ease, without the constant terror of tumbling onto a sanguinely reposing Buddha or toppling over the priceless crystal figurine shipped all the way from Vienna!

But these days, even angels fear to tread in our homes, lest they trip up the ancient vase from Ho Chi Minh City or smudge the intricate weaves of the Persian adorning the Italian marble floor. Folks seem so obsessed with displaying stuff which should rightfully belong to museums that houses come close to resembling hotels or curator’s havens and make us warily wind and weave our way as through treading treacherous territory.

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