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| Family rooms |
| Anoothi Vishal / New Delhi Jul 04, 2010, 00:51 IST |
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Shobhana Kamineni, executive director of the Apollo Hospitals group, is as down-to-earth as they come.
A couple of years ago, there was an opportunity for Shobhana Kamineni and her family to move into a plusher bungalow in one of Hyderabad’s new, posh areas. She refused. Instead she opted to stay back in the comfortable but middle-class home in the heart of the city. The Masab Tank area is crowded; cars and homes, banks and restaurants all jostle harmoniously. “This was where my in-laws lived. My mother-in-law performed her puja here for 25 years.
I realised that you don’t just abandon a home like this,” she says, glancing at the family altar. Hearing this, you realise how grounded Kamineni is, given what she’s inheriting from her father Dr Prathap C Reddy.
Walking through Kamineni’s three-storey home, it’s a realisation that never quite leaves you. Casual statements such as “That room is for my son’s tuitions” or “We got the swimming pool on the terrace so that the girls could party at home instead of going out at night” reinforce the image of the Indian mother and homemaker. But there’s a new-age structure coming up as well: a bridge connecting the Kamineni terrace to the next building. When completed, the bridge will be fully encased in soundproof glass and air-conditioned. It will lead Kamineni from the sanctuary of her home to the world of corporate parleying that goes on in her office in the next block. The bridge is to be soundproof so that “even if the children have their friends over, we are not disturbed”, Kamineni explains.
The full-length swimming pool with a well-manicured garden by its side — and a bar counter wedged in one corner — may be just the right place for an evening out, but indoors the Kamineni home is lived-in and inviting. A state-of-the art lounge complete with a home entertainment system and a huge screen is another area where the Kaminenis, young and old, entertain or just hang out. Everything from the lights to the air-conditioners and even the TV screen mounted on one entire wall can be controlled from Kamineni’s phone. And she evidently takes great pleasure in such technology, fiddling around with the controls till the lights above the paintings on display are turned just right for the photo shoot. “This is where I cheer on my team during the IPL matches,” she says lightly and will not answer, ever the diplomat, when we ask whether it is Hyderabad or Chennai (the team her sister co-owns) that she supports.
But if technology is something that Kamineni is at ease with, her home, interestingly enough, also showcases tradition. Kamineni and her husband re-did their home about two years ago, and they sought no professional help. Instead, she supervised everything from the gym to the old Ravi Varma prints that she collects, and old portraits of her husband’s family. Kamineni says she didn’t want to fill the house with antiques, but some of the most interesting and personal touches come from the bric-a-brac that she brought from an old fort owned by her husband’s family.
Remembering ‘Madras’, Kamineni says that her parents continue to live in the same old home they have always lived in — despite opportunities to move as the business grew. In Delhi there is a relatively newly acquired home that Dr Reddy uses when he is in the capital. It is in New Friends Colony because that is “near the hospital”. Delhi homes can be so crammed, Kamineni mock-complains. They could have bought something in Lutyens’s Delhi, we point out. She sighs: “We could have, back then when the prices were not so high. I guess we chose to invest all our money in our hospitals.”
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