They say a house chooses the people who live in it and this house that Satish Gujral built has the right people living in it: my dear friends, Susana and Carlos Pereira Marques, the Portuguese ambassador to India. It was originally built for Ranjana and Shakhat Singh, who often quotes Satish saying, “This was a gift from an artist to a poet.” The Portuguese residence in India is unlike most of the embassy residences, not in the usual conclaves of the embassy grounds in the hallowed area of Lutyens’s Delhi, but in a grand leafy lane of the exclusive West End Greens, on a large plot in the farm area that we call the green belt of New Delhi. A haven far from the madding crowd.
The New Delhi home of Carlos Pereira Marques, the Portuguese ambassador to India, was designed by the late artist-architect Satish Gujral. This space serves as a connection between the lounge and a small sitting room. The walls of the lounge retain their original raw-brick appearance, contrasted by the greenery of the inner courtyard, which is seen through the large arched window. The window above opens to one of two symmetrical suites on the first floor. The vase lamp is antique Murano glass. Portuguese and Persian carpets add a touch of colour to the room.
To live in a house designed by the late Satish Gujral is not easy, for it is not simply brick and mortar but has indeed been built as a living sculpture, to hold and to have life in all its myriad moods meander through its organic shape.
The entrance lobby—all the walls on the ground floor are in brick, and all the floors in the house are in Jaisalmer stone. The pashmina shawl hung on the upper landing is a 19th-century piece from Kashmir; the cloth hanging below, which depicts the Portuguese coat of arms, was made in India; the Caucasian Shirvan runner is also 19th century.