WHERE THE TREES COME HOME

Nestled amid a dense huddle of fruit-bearing trees, designer duo Aamir and Hameeda Sharma's dream home in Hyderabad is filled with art, tranquillity and the unmatched joys of irreverence

- RAJASHREE BALARAM

It’s hard not to feel deeply wounded when you witness a tree fall to the ground. Aamir and Hameeda Sharma, ardent tree lovers, know the feeling. They still look at the spot near the entrance to their house where once stood a tall tree that yielded the sweetest, succulent mangoes. The benevolent old giant succumbed to nature’s fury last year when heavy rains lashed with stormy gusto across the couple’s 700 sq yard property.

“I still miss that tree. In fact, the main reason we chose this plot was because of the rocky terrain and the abundance of trees all over,” says Hameeda, who led the design and construction of their newly built home. “Initially when we started drawing the plan, we realised that what we were developing could involve an erasure of many of the trees on the property. We then scrapped that plan and started afresh so we could build our house to accommodate the green cover. That’s what we had always wanted — coming back to a home that would be defined by the way it connected the indoors with the outdoors.”

The duo’s shared love and respect for nature is like a recurring chorus all around — not just in the spectacular views of the lush foliage from every part of the house, but also in the way they have used 70 percent of the stone excavated from the site as construction material for their 6,000 sq ft home. Early on, the couple decided to follow an adaptive plan — one that would be mutable enough to embrace adjustments, deductions, additions and expansions as work progressed. Eventually, this also meant having to forfeit some cherished design ideas that they had long nurtured.