MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

With all the talk around consumption habits and fashion’s contribution to climate change, among other environmental issues, vintage and heirloom pieces have been ascribed a unique value, especially when it comes to pandemic weddings. Keerat Kaur, a Gurugram-based fashion stylist tied the knot with her lawyer husband Dilpreet Singh in July this year at her ancestral home. For her Anand Karaj (the Sikh wedding ceremony), she wore a red georgette dupatta with gold gota patti work and a navy blue border, which once belonged to her mother, with a beautiful matte-gold kurta sharara set from Rimple and Harpreet Narula. Kaur says, “I decided long ago that I would incorporate my mum’s wedding dupatta to complete a traditional look on my wedding day.” She teamed the ensemble with heirloom jewellery pieces redesigned by her aunts, who are jewellers. She adds, “Mixing old with new is not only a metaphor for age-old traditions and values to be handed down over generations, but is also significant for preserving novel arts and crafts.”

A UNIQUE IDENTITY

Veteran journalist and editor Nonita Kalra says, “Clothes are our material memory.” The editor married her long-time beau Bhriguraj Singh in 2018. “When I was getting married for the second time, at the age of 49, I knew that I didn’t have to be a ‘designer bride’. I always knew it would have to be a sari for me, as I love the classic drape, but I also knew I wanted the sari to have weight. Not just in actual terms, but it also needed to be weighed down with memories. Since both my parents are gone, I wanted to honour them.” For her signing ceremony, Kalra wore a cream sari that belonged to her grandmother,while for the reception she opted for her mother’s black sari with silver zari work. Ekaya restored the saris and Kalra’s friend and contemporary fashion designer Atsu Sekhose crafted the blouses. This mix of something old to something new reflected the editor’s ties to the fashion industry and acted as an ode to her family. “The ‘old’ helps us remember who we are and keeps us rooted in our origins,” says Palak Shah of Ekaya, who has noted an increase in the number of brides who come to her store to have pieces restored. Remembering her roots was top of mind for Los Angeles-based Dr Deepika Chopra, also known as the Optimism Doctor, when she married her husband, the media entertainment executive and investor Alexander Silverman, in 2015. Chopra found an innovative way to include something old and something new in her multicultural wedding—she walked down the aisle under her mum’s wedding burgundy organza dupatta, embroidered with zardosi, adding dangling kaleeras tied to the edges. She says, “It was so special to feel as if I were being carried and surrounded by her as I took this very significant step.” Her ‘something new’ was a modern update on the classic mangalsutra, designed by her husband, which she wears till today. These details spoke of her own story and connection, not only to her mother but to her motherland too.

THE NEW-AGE APPROACH

As children, many of us liked to play dress-up in our mother’s clothes. For designer Nishka Lulla, her go-to piece to play with was her mother Neeta Lulla’s gold wedding lehenga. Costume designer Neeta was in charge of upcycling Nishka’s wedding ensemble for her wedding six years ago. Says Neeta, “I designed the lehenga with an entire border of Tanjore art, which was then embellished with gemstones and rice pearls. The silk on my lehenga was in tatters but I revived the embroidery and appliquéd them on to Nishka’s piece, which took around 40 days of handwork.” She hopes that Nishka’s daughter Miraya carries on the tradition.

Upcycling is giving brides a chance to experiment with all types of materials. London-based shoe designer Aruna Seth’s wedding was originally supposed to take place at Italy’s Lake Como last July. But with COVID-19 cases rising, she opted for a small civil wedding instead, moving the Lake Como festivities to September of this year. For Seth, who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, and her husband Thomas Yoichi Adolff, who is half-Japanese and half-German, being respectful of cultural nuances was imperative. While the wedding is any thing but intimate, spanning, several functions, Seth has incorporated upcycling techniques in both her wedding dresses. Her dress was designed by Zuhair Murad, and her veil used lace that came from her previous collections. “I was in Italy designing my new collection and sourcing materials when I came across this beautiful lace from my first bridal collection. I instantly knew I had to incorporate and repurpose it into my bridal veil. This material is a one-of-kind bespoke silver-thread Chantilly from France, which has been made in limited-edition runs, making my veil truly individual.” Her Indian wedding ensemble is by Falguni & Shane Peacock, and is adorned with an intricate embroidery of fluttering butterflies (the shoe designer’s trademark motif) combined with the threads from her mother’s wedding sari.

Designer Amit Aggarwal is known for using upcycling techniques in his bridal creations. He has previously created an entire collection from upcycled patola. “There is no question that today’s bride is more conscious and experimental,” he says. And the use of upcycled materials is a new-age way of wearing something old. “When I tell brides that the embroidery is made from recycled materials like rubber, it lends the outfit a feeling of being unique.” He says using upcycled materials give his outfits a ‘unicorn’ quality, something every bride wants. As weddings become smaller in size, it is these details that bring a sense of grandeur to this important day. As Chopra says, “I am seeing a trends towards nostalgia and making meaning out of our moments and honouring traditions and rituals that connect us to ourselves and what we truly value. We are starting to scale things back, thin out the fluff from many aspects of our lives and invest in moments that are more potent with significance.”

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His brand of laid-back American chic made Michael Kors a billionaire, but his story began in the city that never sleeps.

I thought New York was Oz,” Michael Kors says of the city where he made his reputation, the place that gave birth to his enormous success, the town that he loves fiercely. This is the 40th year that Kors has been at the helm of his eponymous business, an enterprise built on his light-hearted reverence for meticulous, classic American clothes, an empire that now comprises clothing for men and women, shoes, handbags, watches, jewellery, eyewear, perfume and more. The designer is at this point a billionaire, the recipient of countless honours, known to millions for his role as a judge on Project Runwayand his charitable work in the fight to end hunger. And though his is a quintessential American story—really, a New York story—the rest of the world has embraced his vision (he now boasts more than 800 shops internationally). As it turns out, the longing for the perfect turtleneck, a beautifully cut trouser, a classic coat with just a soupçon of transgressive wit, is universal.

Are you surprised at how huge it all became? I ask him. “I am,” he replies. “I came of age when there were such distinct borders for a designer. I thought, ‘You’re an American designer, you’re going to design for Americans.’ English designers dressed English women, the French dressed the French. I never thought that American fashion, other than Levi’s, could be something that would be embraced globally. I mean, did I ever think that I would walk down the street in Kuala Lumpur and see five Michael Kors watches and seven Michael Kors handbags? No, I did not.”He found his people at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, though he didn’t last long. “I quit school while still a student [he got a job at the beyond-trendy boutique Lothar’s, on 57th Street, across from Bergdorf Goodman] and to this day, my favourite thing in the world is being on the sales floor,” says Kors. “Zoom has been a lifesaver during lockdown,” he confesses, “but I am such a people person that the  at monotony of Zoom is something that I never truly fell in love with.”
At Lothar’s he met the women he calls the ‘global rich’, people whose effortless elegance and nonchalant chic informed his own ideas about style. “I thought they were so intriguing—Marella Agnelli, women like that. But also celebrities, like Muhammad Ali and his wife Veronica, Goldie Hawn, Diana Ross… It was the ’70s, they were just walking around.” But suddenly—how  fickle is fashion!—Lothar’s tie-dye aesthetic cratered and the boutique’s owners asked Kors to design a few things. One day, when Kors was in the window, his mouth full of Tbar pins, he saw “this tall, elegant woman staring at me, and she comes in and said, ‘Who designed these clothes?’ I said I did. Then she said, ‘My name is Dawn Mello, and I am the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman. If you ever do your own line, call me.’ I went home and sketched the entire collection that night.”

In short order, he made the samples, begged and borrowed equipment, got a friend to model and showed the results to Bergdorf. “I delivered everything in my aunt’s Mercedes, in garment bags.” He convinced the store to give him a trunk show and they were stunned when the cream of Park Avenue society showed up. How did a 21-year-old kid know this crowd? “From Lothar’s! They came to my
trunk show and they all bought something. And I was o to the races.”
Asked whether this kind of origin story is possible for a 21-year-old kid today, he is reflective. “What I would say to a young designer starting out is, be willing to  y by the seat of your pants. I didn’t have a fashion show for the first three years. You’re wasting your money if you’re not ready. I realise the light and the glare of the internet is so intense, but don’t try to design a whole collection. Focus on something
you really love, keep it small at  first. I am always excited to see designers who have a point of view and know their customer; a combination of creativity, empathy and business savvy. I think Telfar does a brilliant job. I am also a fan of Peter Do and of Bode. I think they are all carving their own niche.” He got the first inkling of the future of fashion in the late 1990s. “When I became the designer for Celine, I realised this isn’t so cut up by region anymore.” He had always been shoe- and bag-obsessed (“Maybe because I’m so casual”) and it dawned on him that, unlike clothing, accessories are impervious to the size and age of the wearer and the climate where she lives. He found himself thinking, “Does something work in Jakarta?” “What’s going in Sydney, in Sao Paulo?” instead of “Does that work in Chicago?” There was a world out there—a bigger world. The ascent of accessories and their essential democratic character—if you couldn’t have the ensemble, you could maybe have the stilettos, or the bumbag, or the stockings, or the card case—coincided with what Kors calls the casualisation of fashion. “I have to say, I’m guilty—personally and as a designer,” he confesses. “What we put on the runway in Michael Kors Collection can be opulent, but it’s pretty laid-back. I can moan and groan, and say why are people going out in bike shorts, going to the movies in a jog bra, but the reality is, this breakdown of the rules has been happening my entire career, and we can’t go back. How do we find the happy medium?”

He is, he admits, also trying to find a happy medium, a balance, in his own frenetic life. Asked what he has learnt from the past year, he answers, “One word: appreciation. Appreciation for every little thing—a store that sells those chocolate-covered almonds that you like, a favourite restaurant, your friends, the people you work with, touching something in a store, the rustle of the tissue paper. I am such a Type A, so speedy, maybe it’s good to slow it down a notch?”

Kors is an unrepentant theatre fanatic, hell-bent on seeing every curtain rise from Broadway to the West End. In fact, for his autumn/winter 2021-22 show, he filmed his models (no live audience last April) sauntering in feathers and leather near the Great White Way, marquees for still-shuttered shows shining in the distance. (He con des that were he not a designer he would have loved to be a Broadway producer.) “My kind of good fortune is so rare. It started for me here in New York City, what could I do to give back?” Kors explains. Back in the 1980s, when we were torn apart by the AIDS crisis, I heard about God’s Love We Deliver… The hunger thing really snowballed as I started travelling globally. I thought, there is enough food, how do we partner? How do we lasso the power of social media, our fans, our customers?” This October will be Kors’s ninth year supporting the Watch Hunger Stop campaign. So far, more than 24 million school meals have been delivered to children around the globe through the organisation.To give back, to fully appreciate the small things along with the bigger things—and the unfathomably huge things—these are the lessons that Kors has learnt. And if humanity has determined anything over the past 18 months, it is that we are one world, one global family. “We were in the South Pacific, we’re on a little speck of an island and there’s a lovely little pearl shop in the middle of nowhere. We walk in, and the girl is wearing a dress from the Michael Michael Kors di usion collection. She says, ‘Are you…?’ I say, ‘You’re wearing one of our dresses!’ She says, ‘You know the piece?’ ‘I know every piece that we make!’ ‘Even still?’” she asked this boy from Long Island, looking at his own work, no doubt beaming just a little, a million miles from his beloved New York City. “Even still.”

BODICE

As the label turns ten, Ruchika Sachdev ponders the lessons she’s learnt.

At 23, Ruchika Sachdeva was setting up Bodice, the Delhi-based label which, from the outset, came with an aesthetic clarity that eludes decade-old brands. Now, Bodice is a decade-old brand. It won the Vogue India Fashion Fund in 2014 and the Woolmark Prize in 2018. The traits that define the clothes—tailored but not stiff , fluid but not froufrou, impeccable but never insipid—ensure a Bodice garment is always distinctly so. Sachdeva’s Lakmé Fashion Week finale collection this year featured emerald-green silk shirts with sleeves bearing the label’s signature pleats running down their length, colourblocked shirts that brought to mind Barnett Newman’s paintings, full-sleeved shirt dresses that went from tan to navy to rani pink… The colour palette was new; the rest, a continuation. (The former
she partly attributes to the COVID-19 pandemic and the reflection—and risk appetite—it sparked.)
When we speak on the phone, Sachdeva compares designing clothes with meditating, “the idea of striving for clarity”. She recalls how growing up in a busy home in West Delhi spurred the desire to go the other direction, to simplify. “I don’t like calling it minimalism because all the clichés strip it of the nuances.” She shares with us three key learnings.

THE CRAFT

“First and foremost, I’ve learnt the skill of how to make a good-quality garment, and I’m still learning. It’s a craft. It’s using a fabric, something that a person directly wears on their body, engineered in a way that it can be washed and worn many times. In a creative profession, you can’t learn everything in college. I thrive on travel. I’ve looked at garments everywhere. I’ve seen clothes up-close, turned them inside out, stretched them, pulled at them, looked at yarn, fabric, textile. For me, the journey of design started from craft; I wanted to learn how to create a good-quality garment before I understood what it meant to be a designer.”

THE BUSINESS

“Gone are the days when you created a collection every six months. Now people expect things from you. But more than people’s expectations, you want to pay your bills, right? You can say you don’t care about that side of things, but I do. I’m running a
business. What’s our revenue? What our expenditure? This aspect of the business has been fascinating.I enjoy it equally.”

THE PEOPLE

“There was a time when I hired people who were older than me. From there I’ve reached a place where my team members are younger than me. It’s a talented team; they know my mind. Now I feel I have a team that I love and I’m learning how to navigate those relationships how to empower them but at the same time challenge them, be able to count on them and vice-versa, because it’s never easy.”

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House of Hope

Bengaluru-based Jay Ahya was looking at the bigger picture when he launched The Beach House Project (BHX) in 2016, a unique travel and rejuvenation programme designed just for creatives. “It brings together 14 people from different backgrounds, places and stages in their career, who intend to chill in a nice villa with martinis by the pool, but at the same time help in each other’s growth,” says Ahya, before cautioning, “I’d say we are a ‘conversations’ company rather than a travel company.”

It’s not serendipity that brings together this cohort of artists, filmmakers, start-up entrepreneurs, musicians, hackers and designers. Since 2016, the BHX team has been diligently sifting through hundreds of entries to hand-pick creatives for each of the 20 editions it has hosted so far.

Amidst Kerala’s lush Attapadi hills, a similar narrative is being carved by Aditya Kapoor and his team that hosted the debut edition of Free.wav electronic music residency this January. The week-long programme, which brought together eight musicians from different genres and geographies, was organised with a desire to build a community around electronic music—a space to share, discuss, and inspire each other, while attending curated workshops and classes. For most musicians, the pandemic may have stopped any interaction with a live audience, what with the shuttering of music venues across the country, but this pause became a catalyst more than a deterrent for Kapoor and crew: “We knew we had to do this now because creatives [after months of virtual performances] were looking to get out, be inspired and meet like-minded people,” he says, “In this heavily virtual context in which musicking was taking place, Free.wav was able to create a tactile experience of sharing, discussing and creating music.”

Creative Hub

Ahya credits the rise of creatives in India to the noughties, when careers once deemed alternative started gaining mainstream interest. “Somewhere around 2013 or 2014, the creative agency took a big leap. Not only were there ample opportunities, but parents too were okay with children pursuing careers in design, music and photography,” he says. It was around the same time that he attended The Coalition, a weekend-long creative boot camp of sorts organised by OML, which debuted with heavyweights like celebrity manager Anjula Acharia, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, designer Anita Dongre and musician Ankur Tewari sharing their creative journeys and offering a platform to discuss, debate and exchange ideas with others looking for creative stimulation. Here, Ahya met many inspiring twenty-somethings: a photographer dedicated to capturing climate change, a pilot-turned-skateboard maker, an illustrator working on women’s rights and every cool kid worth following on Instagram. “They all had the potential to change the world for good, but they were so busy doing it that they were not spending any time outside of their cocoon to seek others like them,” he recalls.

With no template to success or Quora to turn to, Ahya set out to create an ecosystem for creatives to foster and thrive. Through BHX, attendees can travel to locations like the Andamans, Goa, Kashmir, Shillong, Ladakh and Nainital (and pre COVID-19, even Croatia, Sri Lanka and Bali) where the lure is two-fold: to explore and to feel enriched. Like Ahya and Kapoor, New York-based Geetika Agrawal was relying on travel’s ability to increase one’s levels of creativity when she started Vacation With An Artist (VAWAA), a platform that allows people to connect with artists and vacation at their studios to learn a new skill. Similar to Airbnb’s Experiences in concept, but wider in scope (a holiday can be anything from five days to a month, depending on the art), her pursuit-driven adventures feature a curated list of creative encounters—holiday with a fashion designer in Vietnam, a calligrapher in Japan or a shoemaker in Prague. “It’s targeted towards people who are not happy being tourists but want to experience something immersive,” says Agarwal, who during the pandemic shifted her in-person session format to interactive online sessions with artists around the world. “With borders closed, we knew that creativity and connection would serve as an antidote to uncertainty and isolation. It instantly became an outlet for people to step away from the daily stress of the pandemic, feel a sense of freedom and express through learning and making with their hands,” adds Agrawal, who has hosted over 140 virtual sessions this past year.

What makes these holidays different from a digital detox—popular among high-flying techies to recalibrate and heal mental jet lag—is the outcome. While Agrawal promises a new skill set added to your résumé, Kapoor’s gatherings provide a magical setting, in the lap of nature, for musicians to rewire. Set at the remote Bhoomi Farms, which Kapoor calls “a ripe environment, with limited connectivity to the outside world,” his residency offers musicians a space to create with trees, insects, birds, and the natural world for company. Here, each day starts with a hearty South Indian breakfast, after which attendees take over an open-air gazebo and turn it into an electronic music studio. A swim at the nearby Bhavani river or a forest walk punctuated with sightings of unique birds and animals fills in the evenings before the group settles in for a synth jam in unison with the sound of crickets at the farm every night. “At a time when the global mood is that of hopelessness and malaise, we required this physical and digital cutting-off to refresh, gain perspective on the potency of our creative minds, and how it could be multiplied by sharing,” he says of Free.wav, where on the agenda are conversations around synthesis, deep-listening and music-making.

Ahya, on the other hand, is exploring the problem-solving nature of creative thinking with his endeavour. A typical week at BHX Project has plenty of R&R, but also brainstorming sessions to push creatives to collaborate. “The rest few days, when people share the stories of how they got there, are the most vulnerable—the screw-ups, the challenges and the successes,” he shares. Then come the ‘mind dates’, which are facilitated between two creatives to stimulate deeper conversations and unlock certain parts of the brain. Vignettes of jamming sessions and bonfires on their social media offer a peek into
the week, but what’s also captured is a camaraderie, wherein attendees not only learn about each other’s industries but also come together to form a support network of sorts for future collaborations.

No Limits

A majority of takers for such immersive holidays fall under the 20 to 40 age group, but age is just incidental. Agrawal has seen “guests as young as eight years old to 77 years old,” while among BHX’s famous alumni includes the veteran actor Shefali Shah, of International Emmy-winning show Delhi Crime. Kapoor says he was pleasantly surprised to see more female participants than male for his debut edition. Up next, he’s planning a larger, more inclusive round in October with musicians who identify as trans and non-binary, along with other underrepresented communities.

What motivates such creative getaways to exist is the dire lack of creative spaces in India. At 15,000 (inclusive of food and stay), Free.wav offers an accessible environment outside of everyday life where musicians can pause, come together, be inspired and learn from each other. Ahya goes on to compare his BHX to residencies in Europe and programmes like the Harvard Summer School, which few can afford. Priced between 40,000- 80,000 (depending on if it’s in India or abroad), it works as a cost-efficient think-tank where “the knowledge exchange isn’t about global ideas but contextualised to India”.

Magnetic Fields’s Munbir Chawla was on a similar brainwave while planning the debut edition of Nomads, a festival in Ranthambore, held this March, which he’d rather call an open-air gathering of creatives and community. Bringing together a line-up of creatives from music, design, food and more, Chawla shares that he aims to “fill a gap and build a creative community. We see Nomads as a meeting point for the creative-minded.”

The pandemic may have pushed Agrawal to offer her micro-apprenticeships online, opening them to many more takers, but it has inspired Ahya’s team to widen its horizons. “COVID-19 put a stop to a lot of creative interactions, with gigs on hold and art exhibitions going virtual,” says Ahya, who also organises a two-week road trip edition for creatives as well as the four-day long F&X festival that attracts over 300 creatives at Jim Corbett every year. Before the second wave hit, he had plans to scale up and host 24 more BHX editions this year in Nainital, Shillong, Goa and Ladakh and more. But he remains hopeful for more travel after the vaccination drive is complete. For now, he’s relying on meeting creatives in the brave new world, post-pandemic. On Instagram, BHX’s appeal among its 21,000 followers remains promising. “It’s the instant, infinite possibilities. People come to the Beach House looking for different things and they leave with something completely different,” says Ahya.

Learn about the the next edition of Beach House Project @bhxproject. Know more about Free.wav’s music residency in Kerela @bhoomi.farms. Check out Vacation With An Artist’s roster of 94 artists @vawaa_.

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AGE OF ACTION

But Dr Goodall won’t have it any other way. “For me, the silver lining is that I have been able to reach millions more across the world. But that’s on a personal level. I also hope the pandemic serves as a wake-up call for us to change for the better.” She flits often from ‘I’ to ‘us’. She might begin in her backyard but it isn’t long before she takes the giant leap into life at large, covering both the human and natural world. For Dr Goodall, this is humanity’s big moment of reckoning. “We brought this pandemic on ourselves by disrespecting animals and nature. We have created conditions where it’s relatively easy for a pathogen, like this virus, to spill over from an animal to a person. We clearly need to establish a new relationship with our natural world, as well as a new and more sustainable economy.”

While the will-we-or-won’t-we will only be answered in time, Dr Goodall warns and reminds: “There are some just waiting to get back to business as usual. But we need to remember that we are on a planet with finite natural resources. In some places, we’re already using them up faster than nature can replenish them. We’re also on a planet with a growing human population, even if eventually we’re told it’ll slow down, it’s not going to be for sometime. And finally, we’re on a planet where so many of us lead unsustainable lifestyles, consuming much more than we need. If we carry on with ‘business as usual’, I wouldn’t want to imagine what it would be like for my great-great-grandchildren. But we’ve been given this precious window of time to turn things around.”

The pandemic is a lesson we need to learn from, and Dr Goodall has her plate full. On one hand, she has her advocacy and the institute. On the other, she’s working on the Jane Goodall Legacy Project, where she’s building up an endowment for her larger goal of conservation. “I won’t always be here to go and give talks to enthuse people in different countries—some countries really rely on me right now to go and give lectures to raise money for them—but my life’s work will carry on as long as I can.”

Slowing down isn’t an option for the octogenarian. If anything, she’s in a hurry to do more—be it trying to raise awareness or funds, or simply getting people to do their bit to save the planet. Her ultimate goal is to make humanity realise that we are part of the natural world—on which we depend for clean air, water, food, and life as we know it—and for us to protect and restore the balance that is required. “I see what we call biodiversity, which is a nasty, scientific term, and which for most people doesn’t mean anything. I like to call it a tapestry of life. Every time a species becomes extinct, it’s like pulling a thread from that tapestry. Eventually, it will hang in tatters. But what we depend on is healthy ecosystems, a healthy tapestry. If that tapestry is in tatters, the ecosystem collapses. That only hurts us. We are not immune from extinction. Seriously, there’s this window of time and we must take advantage of it. We must get together and take action. How do I keep going with all this doom and gloom? Because I’m flipping obstinate. I’m not going to allow the Trumps, the crusty old CEOs and the old boys in the oil and gas industry to win.”

OUT OF AFRICA

But how did the little girl obsessed with her tree, the Doctor Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting (“There was no TV back then”) and her dog Rusty (“My hero, who taught me that animals have personalities, minds and emotions”), become not just the world’s foremost chimpanzee expert but a symbol of real hope for many of us across the globe? “I was all of 10 when I dreamed that I would grow up, go to Africa, live with wild animals and write books about them. Everybody laughed at me. ‘How will you do that?’ ‘Africa’s far away, you don’t have money.’ And of course, ‘But you’re just a girl.’ Yes, we didn’t have money and I was a girl,” she recalls the taunts that young girls with big dreams have to often swat away. At barely twenty-something, she was invited to Kenya by a friend. “I saved money by working as a waitress. Once I was there, I heard about Dr Louis Leakey, who was the then curator of the Natural History Museum. I think he was really impressed because I had read every natural history book I could. He gave me this incredible opportunity, to live not with any old animal but the one most like us—chimpanzees.” She found herself studying the chimpanzee community at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, where she did her most path-breaking work, even as she took on the basic tenets of academia and scientific study. To start with, she named her ‘subjects’. They weren’t specimens one, two and three; instead they were Flo, Fifi and David Greybeard, with the latter making it to Time magazine’s ‘15 Most Influential Animals That Ever Lived’ list. David, she points to a framed picture of the silver faced chimp on the book-lined shelves behind her, above a picture of her mother and beside a picture of Rusty, she tells me, was the very first chimp at Gombe to have trusted her. Not only did her research challenge the idea that only humans constructed and used tools (chimps do too) and that not all chimps were vegetarian, but most importantly, she saw them as living beings capable of personalities, not anthropomorphising them but understanding them through close observation. And with that, she introduced science to empathy. “Empathy leads to ‘I think they’re doing this because…’ Then you put on your scientific hat and say, ‘Okay, now I’m going to prove or disprove it’.”

Whether academics or sitting across the table from anyone who will listen, be it timber moguls or talking heads, controversial or not, Dr Goodall, petite and polite in her signature turtleneck and shawl, has taken on the establishment by going out there and engaging. But in these polarising echo-chamber times, how does she manage to bring such disparate groups together? “Give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they honestly don’t realise what they’re doing. Some people have never been to a rainforest or a wetland, they don’t know the magic of it.” But there must be more to it. What is the Dr Goodall secret to breaking through? “I always go back to the way I was brought up by my incredible mother. And the thing she taught me is that if you disagree with someone, number one, listen to them. Because maybe, you get to better understand where they’re coming from. Or maybe they’ve got a point that you hadn’t thought of, which will help you as you try and effect change. Number two, don’t be aggressive with them; communicate. Number three, try to find something to connect with, some common ground. Like, ‘Oh you love dogs? I love dogs.’ When you find something that you both can relate to, start off with it. If you find a weak spot, don’t argue with them. Don’t try and get through to the brain, you’ve got to reach the heart. And the simplest way of doing that is by telling stories.” Going back to the very basics of human communication, of listening, engaging and storytelling, is Dr Goodall’s not-so-secret tool of diplomacy, learnt as much from her decades of advocacy as from her mother.

GENERATION THEN, NOW, NEXT

Her mother comes up often as we chat. Dr Goodall tells me how she was her greatest champion, right from the start. It’s her mother’s words of wisdom that keep her going till date, and which led to her big-picture vision for JGI and the legacy she would like to leave behind. “She always said, ‘If you really want to do this then you’re going to have to work awfully hard and you’ll have to take advantage of every opportunity. If you don’t give up, you’ll find away!’ That’s the message I still live by, and now I take the same message to young people everywhere, particularly in disadvantaged communities, and so many have written to me or said, ‘You taught me because you did it I can do it too.’ I wish mum knew how her message to me now helps children all around the world.”

She’s referring to Roots & Shoots, the global youth-led community action programme run by JGI, which started in 1991 with 12 teenagers in Dr Goodall’s back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is now spread across 100 countries. The programme aims to “inspire and educate” young people to become compassionate citizens of the world. Each group of Roots & Shoots tackles three projects that it identifies and chooses: one to help people, one to help animals and one to help the environment. Its India chapter, headed by Shweta Khare, began in 2019, and while the pandemic has stopped Dr Goodall from visiting, she’s hoping to change that once things stabilise more. The message is simple: each one of us makes an impact on the planet every single day. “Most of us have a choice as to what sort of impact we have, be it what we eat, what we wear or how we treat people, animals and nature. Unless you’re very poor and then you simply have to do whatever it takes to survive,” she explains.

It is in Dr Goodall’s interactions with young people that she finds her hope, no matter how humongous the task she has at hand of protecting and saving our planet—animals, nature, humans et al. It’s what keeps her going, she says. “Alongside this amazing intellect we have,” she’s quick to add. “We are coming up with innovative solutions to combat climate change, like better solar or wind energy. And individually, it’s all about how we live our own lives and use our brains to try and make a softer ecological footprint. Then there’s nature; she is so resilient, so strong. If nature chooses, she will reclaim areas that we’ve absolutely destroyed and all that’s on the brink of extinction can be given another chance. And finally, the indomitable human spirit, the people who tackle the impossible, which becomes possible because of them. These are my reasons for hope.

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But right off the bat, Shastri tells me she has no significant stories about the striking light-filled home she shares with her husband Diwakar, children Devika and Kartikeya (their eldest daughter Gayatri lives in New York) and their three dogs Lama, Caramel and Cookie. What exists, though, are many smaller, memorable stories. An anecdote about how she found the two intricately carved wooden columns, which occupy pride of place in the living area, in Sri Lanka. Another about how she created her version of a courtyard indoors, replete with a palm tree. And a third one about her rigorous search for buttery kadappa stone that makes up the flooring of the area where she does her havans which are an intrinsic part of her practice.

Calming corners

These may seem like stories about the house but they are as much about Shastri, the founder of the yoga studio Om Yogashala in Delhi and her beliefs. Also a product development consultant with Paro, a holistic wellness brand from the Good Earth stable, Shastri’s home is a reflection of her passion for wellness along with all things Indian and sustainable.

Spread over 10,000sqft (the farm is two and a half acres), the home is an eclectic space where concrete walls and a high, wood-slatted ceiling sit comfortably with lithographs and framed phulkari from Quetta. Traditional elements abound, but their presence is softened by a strong, minimalist air, the starting point of which is that the home is split into two levels—the open-plan ground floor with the living and dining area, and the top floor where the bedrooms rest. The living area has several seating nooks, though the majority of the space is dedicated to the modernist area by the fireplace, dominated by earthy tones. Surrounding it are smaller corners, like the family-favourite near the stairs, where a glass window overlooks a sofa and a swing hangs atop Art Deco tiles.

And while it seems like a lot, each element exists in harmony with the rest. “It took us two and a half years to construct, and when we finally moved in last year during lockdown, I was exhausted,” says the 52-year-old, who has been teaching yoga for two decades. “So I rested, slept, took the space in, saw where the light goes, and began setting things.”

Room for every mood

Shastri’s live-and-adapt approach also features ideas that have been stewing in her mind for years. “I was invested in the house to the point of madness. In retrospect, I’d advise people to just get a designer,” she says, with a laugh. She remembers how the late style savant Jivi Sethi once told her to create a mood board of all the things she’d like in her house. “That was the most helpful piece of advice I ever got. I tore pages from magazines and filled my diary, which I still have. I realise now that if you are confident in what you like, then you’ll like it years later.”

The result is the hybrid we call India Modern, where the pièce de résistance is the floor-to-ceiling metallic and wood screens near the indoor palm.

“Only Ayush [Kasliwal, furniture and product designer] could help me translate the idea. I had found a circular piece of metal in his workshop, which he later cast for me. It was a bold pattern, but he felt it would cut existing lines and bring a certain softness.” A similar idea was executed in the Jaipur stone jali by a local artisan for the entryway.

Pieces of India

Many objects and details have been carefully collected over the years and placed perfectly so that they get their due, be it the old Indian brass details on the main door or the beaten metal Hanuman masks that Shastri picked up from Varanasi. At the entrance, a Nathdwara painting looks down upon a settee with legs shaped like a lion’s paws, and a work by A Balasubramaniam hangs by the dining area, reminiscent of a time when Shastri would pump her modest savings into buying art. Close by are photographs by Dinesh Khanna and an aerial view of the Rann of Kutch acquired at the Serendipity Art Festival. A Manjunath Kamath work greets you by the stairs, while a painting by an Odia artist looms over the staircase landing. Chairs by Iqrup+ Ritz and pieces by Gitanjali Kasliwal in the living and dining areas, and lighting by Murano India (Diwakar’s company) in several parts of the house, add an edge. In a closet rests a cherished family heirloom—a porcelain set gifted to Diwakar’s grandfather, India’s second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, on his last trip to Tashkent by the government of Russia.

Given the glass walls, it’s evident that natural light was key. Shastri tells me she’s a sun worshipper and that the house was born out of her love for sunsets and sunrises, and so it faces east. She’s followed basic Vastu practices, so everything is a combination of energies. She does yoga in different parts of the house, indoors and outdoors and “whether it is doing an agnihotra at sunset or sunrise, whichever side I face, I have a space for havan”. Also part of the havan are the marble lotus feet (charan) she designed for Paro. Adding to the holistic aura are the gardens with a wealth of medicinal plants—moringa, amla, neem—the power of which she harnesses in her daily menu, and has even used in a range of teas for the Dharamsala Tea Company. “My house is an extension of my life. My favourite compliment is when someone says it is tranquil.”

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