A doll’s house

That is only a small preview of what waits for you inside. The antique shelf at the corner gives you a better picture of the love this young couple has for anything that is old and has a story to tell. “The shelf is a 150-year-old sweet shop,” Rohini says. At the bottom rack, the sweet seller had sat to sell his sweets. “He would remove the doors everyday that can be reattached in the evening when he closes the shop,” Eshwar says.

Every corner of the house is packed with pieces of history, so thoughtfully collected that you feel nostalgic for a time you never belonged to. There are for instance, old black-and-white photographs of men and women they have no relation with, random photos they collected. A room further inside has more dolls, arranged neatly inside a shelf, categorised in ways. There are porcelains and glass toys on the top, and tin toys at the bottom. On the inside of a glass table, they have stored celluloid toys more than 70 years old. Along the way, they also collect old vessels, which now stay on racks along the staircase and shelf tops. Every piece of furniture in the house is an antique, more than a hundred years old. Sometimes it comes down from their families, like the bed of a grandmother, and the chairs of great grandfathers. Eshwar has a habit of surprising Rohini with gifts from the past. For her birthday in November, she is waiting for another surprise at their doorstep. But then she had always wanted it so, even as a girl.

“When I finished my tenth grade and got the marks my mother had asked for, she said she would buy me a gift. I chose a black mask from Goa, a form of Yali, which was 300 to 400 years old!” Not surprisingly, Rohini grew up to be an artist. She appreciates craft even as she collects history. “The importance of craft must not be forgotten. It is the craft of today that becomes the antique of tomorrow.” She keeps the initials she finds in old bowls and boxes of unknown people, unchanged. In the kitchen, you see a rice bowl with ‘M.S.’ written on it, a spice box with Tamil letters ‘Pu Mu Pu’.

Eshwar’s love had always been for cars — toy cars and real ones. At 15, he restored a car for the first time, a 1935 Plymouth. That love grew up with him, restoring vintage cars. These are now in Bengaluru, where the two first met and fell in love. Their creativity extended to even their weddings — a Bengali one and a Tamil one — with a video of the highlights. Now, the couple are planning to open the house for visitors. Rohini’s mother Indira is seen saying, “We had a clue... When she went away to do her MA, she looked firm even at the airport. But then she makes a phone call and in a broken voice, tells me ‘Take care of Eshwar, he is really crying’.”