In defence of being untrendy

am writing this column in Coonoor. I'm sitting on the front lawn of award-winning designer Pavitra Rajaram and her husband Paul Abraham's home.

- MANJU SARA RAJAN

It is a beautifully sunny temperate day. There are bushes of hydrangeas and roses, poinsettias unbridled by pots, jacaranda and just a general cornucopia of green—an ensemble that feels like the perfect balance of English-cottage life and Indian tropicality. Rajaram's home is the embodiment of her. It is the home of a decorator—she is the former creative head of Good Earth—so of course this domestic tableau is a perfectly balanced combination of objects and colours. But what I particularly love about it is that there's little that's trendy about it. Rajaram loves botanicals and colours, believes the perfect wall-colour is a shade of aqua and not white; there are books that showcase her and Abraham's affinity for antiques and arts, bolstered by an outstanding collection of pieces. I know I can come back here in five years and it would seem just as relevant to their family and just as oblivious of trendiness.

That brings me to my supplication. It is still January, so if you are going to make a home-related resolution for 2025, let it be this: My space will reflect myself. It is the bane of an editor's year-end rituals that one has to go through a year's worth of images to suss out "trends", looking at what has been and what may be in the coming calendar. What I'm met with is a surfeit of rooms "made for the 'gram'. It used to be that you could tell designers' works apart to some extent, but now one designer room blends into another, and I often find myself bleary, unable to tell one over-scaped, personality-less space from another.

Watch a series of design magazine home tours of celebrities, and you'll understand exactly what I mean. I'd blame interior designers but it's not just them. It is also the client who believes a popular reel on social media is more important than creating something that's truly representative of themselves and how they live.