Mumbai Dreams |
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If you think big,” says Bharat Gandhi, standing in front of his extraordinary Lower Hutt house, “then you do big. Otherwise, forget about it.”
“With so many houses in New Zealand, the first thing you see is the garage,” says Bharat. “But I had in mind something that really impacts you from the outside.”
I’ve arrived after a short walk from Woburn station, down nondescript streets on a blankly grey day, and found… colour, opulence, scale; another world. At either end of the sweeping driveway stand two imposing gates of black iron, the entrance gate branded at its heart with a gold leaf curlicue B, the exit with an A for Bharat’s wife Anjana.
“It’s very grand,” I say.
“Well,” he replies, “that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Growing up in India, Bharat Gandhi conjured visions of a vast, lavish mansion to spur him on– and now he has built it in Lower Hutt
He’s right. This is the ultimate dream house, the expression of a lifelong aspiration with a $3 million price tag. When Bharat was growing up in a village near Mumbai, the ambitious child of an average-to-poor family, this was the house he imagined himself living in one day – though it’s safe to say that Lower Hutt didn’t feature in the vision. It was to be vast, improbably lavish – a house sufficiently unlike anything he knew to spur him on in life.
The medallion on the floor tiles was made in China, based on an Italian sample.
He opens the door and we step between matching bronze goddesses, bearing two small bowls meant for candles, into the 6m-high atrium. In front of us a 60-bulb chandelier descends from the strato-sphere, bisecting a grand double staircase. Facing each other across the vast space, water maids in relief on the walls appear to be pouring their jugs onto the Italian porcelain tiles below. “We had to have something on the walls,” says Bharat, “otherwise it could have looked plain.”
He needn’t have worried. Bharat says the outside of the house, with imposing pillars flanking the door, was inspired by a home he saw when visiting his daughter in Perth. But the interior “was driven purely by my imagination”, and that’s not a place where the plain and the ordinary find much purchase.
Almost everything inside, from the extravagant American furniture and Italian tiles to the ornate wooden doors sourced from China, has been imported.
Nothing from their former house has made the cut, apart from a coffee table Bharat’s live-in 80-year-old father was keen on. “You can’t dream for something and then cut corners,” he says.
“He’s a lover of all good things,” adds Anjana, joining us in the atrium with their son and daughter-in-law, who also live in the house. So what part did Anjana play in the design of the house? “Maybe 90 per cent of the ideas were his, but he showed me everything. And I’m over the moon with it.”
They met in Mumbai, where Bharat studied mechanical engineering and later started a small business. When his sister, his only sibling, married a Kiwi and emigrated here, family trumped country. He came out by himself for a look. “After six months here I said to the family, ‘Okay, let’s get going’.”
He now owns a company in Lower Hutt that imports industrial valves, which sounds far too prosaic for such a larger-than-life character. But maybe that explains the house: he needed an outlet.
“But it’s not only for me. I want my family to enjoy this place, my daughters and my sister when they come to visit, and my friends. I like people to be here and to enjoy it with me.”
The Gandhis’ temporary temple; at the time this issue was going to press, their Indian-made temple had just arrived, complete with statues and seating.
There is a pleasant spicy emanation coming from the kitchen, Anjana’s favourite room. Befitting the scale of this house it has double ovens, two dish-washers and a vast walk-in pantry, with deep drawers for bulk-bought rice, dahl and chapatti flour, and shelves stocked from floor to ceiling with spices.
Turns out the pantry was originally in a different spot. When Bharat saw that it blocked the view between kitchen and dining room he had the whole thing moved. Again, no compromise: “Even if it costs you money, you have to do it right, otherwise there’s no point”.
The biggest test of that resolve turned out to be a humble laundy chute between the master bedroom and downstairs that required the construction of a small mechanical lift. A local guy quoted him $30,000 to build it, but Bharat eventually found one far cheaper in the US.
As we walk around the house, Indian instrumental music is piped into each room but, apart from the Bollywood-dominated DVD collection in the wonderfully plush, red-carpeted theatre upstairs, nothing else about this house feels distinctively Indian. If anything, says Bharat, it owes more to China, source of the doors and many other fixtures.
In truth this house is more a product of one man’s imagination and ambition than any national style – the dream made real. “I came from a family that couldn’t ever imagine such things,” he says.
This weekend I will be: Barbecuing in the backyard located right next to the stream.
The best time of the day for me is: 7pm.
My favourite part of the house is: The bar and the sauna.
At the moment I am enjoying eating: Lots of grilled curried fish.
And drinking: Scotch.
My best moments in the kitchen are: Listening to music and watching TV.
A quote I often use is: Live like a king and let others enjoy your kingdom too.
The first thing I do when I get home from work is: Relax in the bar.
In the next five/10 years I’d like to be: Still enjoying this house.
Bharat Gandhi
For web-exclusive images click on the "photo gallery" link above
Story: Matt Philp
Photographs: Jane Ussher
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