CULTURAL MEDLEY

Starting her design journey in the 70s with the Oberoi hotels, to the restoration of Rashtrapati Bhavan and Hyderabad House and now to setting up K2India, Padma Shri Sunita Kohli walks us through her home which epitomises her love for arts, crafts and books.

- Mridula Sharma

'I thaka’, a deeply loved poem about a mythical destination of the mind and the spirit, has always deeply resonated with me and my way of thinking about life, travelling and research. It also informs my particular design philosophy. A love of Cavafy’s poems began when I visited many Egyptian cities, including Alexandria and Cavafy was the “poet of the city”! I am familiar with the physical landscape of his poems – the Levant and great Hellenic sites in Greece and the Anatolian coast of Turkey,’ tells Sunita, a cosmopolitan and iconic interior designer and furniture manufacturer of close to half a century.

As a self-taught designer, Sunita’s first project was the Oberoi, Khajuraho, way back in 1975. A self-taught professional who ventured into interior design quite by chance, destiny veered this literature student from Lucknow, who was then enrolled for a doctorate. The Oberoi Khajuraho led to two more hotels for the group in Egypt and the journey continued till she was appointed to restore and conserve various sections of the Rashtrapati Bhavan from 1985-1989. This was followed by renovations of Hyderabad House when for the first time it was closed for nine months. Interiors for the State buildings meant looking for master craftsmen whose works would present the true legacy of Indian crafts and craftsmen to visiting dignitaries. That set Sunita off on a trip to hunt out such treasures from the quiet corners of the country and then also to ensure that the craftspeople were honoured for their skills.