MANJU SARA RAJAN 

Writer, Editor, Arts Manager 

Long before I had the chance to make my own, I’ve dreamed upon ideas of Home.

Somewhere during the Covid years, I came upon Manju Sara Rajan’s Instagram, and was immediately taken by her home. Located in Kerala, her home reached out to me like a balm, all wood and glass and earthy colours in conversation with the abundance of nature that surrounds it.  

The loveliest homes reveal in themselves the image of their keepers, and with two decades in the field of design and art, Manju had expertly distilled the essence of both self and context into hers. Between then and now, Manju has made herself another home, in Bangalore, where again, her home speaks of her place in time.

Currently, Manju holds multiple roles that feed her sense of space. As Senior Adviser at Asian Paints, she steers their online décor platform, Beautiful Homes as its Editor-in-Chief. She also founded The Maker’s Trail, which leads design, art and architecture tours. And then she’s the founding member of KAASH, a Bangalore-based gallery, with a focus on art programming inspired by Indian crafts. Amongst all this richesse, are past notable stints at Kochi-Muziris Biennale as CEO, and another at Architectural Digest India’s, as its launch editor, and a long roster of writing for publications like Time, Vogue, Indian Express, Mint Lounge and Open Magazine.

Natasha Khurana: How did you come to Design in journalism?

Manju Sara Rajan: I’ve always had an interest. Back in 2006, at Mint Lounge, I began covering Art, as the big new segment, with the art market booming and people settings up funds. When I joined Conde Nast as Features Editor for Vogue, it was very significant in this relationship-making, as I worked more on design, art and décor. At the same time, I was building my home in Kerala, and I’d always be looking at Architectural Digest and other home magazines, so my interest in Design began expanding beyond the perspective of Art. So, when they decided to launch AD in India, they asked me to draw up an editorial plan, and I got the job. It became my profession, beyond my personal interest, coinciding with us constructing a home, and everything came together at the same time.

NK: I read a lovely piece about your Bangalore house, and I want to ask you, how do you imagine your personal space? What should that space hold for you?

MSR: One thing I’ve learnt, our spaces are a lot like our wardrobes. It’s like how we change the way we dress as we evolve. And I think if your space is truly a reflection of how you’re feeling and what stage of life you’re in, then your space will reflect that, and it works best when it does. When you’re not designing to a trend and when you’re not putting together something just because it’s cool but really is contextual to both to you and to the place that it’s in. For me, the objects and elements that I want around me are very tactile and textural – textile, pottery, things like that.

I realised after moving to Bangalore and setting up a home that was purely for me, is that I was in a little bit of a rebellious mood at the time. I have pieces that I probably wouldn’t have had in my previous life in Kerala. Now I’ve just finished putting together a studio workspace space for myself and that looks very different as well. My Kerala home is still very much a part of my life and we’re always going back and forth, so it's very interesting for me to see who I am in all these places.

The commonality between all these places is that I love putting old and new together, I like having a mix, I love the idea of having something from IKEA sitting next to an antique cabinet, sitting next to great piece of contemporary design. It’s that notion that you’re not typecast into any one genre or style but you’re able to represent your likes and dislikes very clearly by mixing things together. And I think that’s also emblematic of my jewellery, my wardrobe.

NK: It’s like the high-low of fashion 

MSR: Yeah, exactly and I think it’s more interesting when it can sit like that. That your home is not all older things, or all IKEA, all Italian design. It’s in the mix. But essential to that, is You. Because I’m not sure that even an interior designer would be able to interpret it so precisely. But if we lead with our nose then we can end up with more interesting combinations. 

NK: This is so true, it’s really tiring to look at houses that look like catalogues. 

MSR: Or Pinterest. 

NK: Sometimes it looks like it’s designed to be shot in a magazine. 

MSR: It is. Actually, that’s one of the most tiresome parts of where we’re at in Interior Design now. It wasn’t even the case 13 years ago when AD launched. I suppose the success of design magazines is as much responsible for it. But the proliferation of it has meant that people are sort of living in replicas, of images from Pinterest and Japandi Scandi or whatever. It is deathly boring; you feel like just going in and throwing things around because it’s like someone has made stuff up on a computer and then rendered it most perfectly into real life. I always wonder who the people are who live in it, because there is no sign of the person. There’s no sign of the individual, of their likes or dislikes.

NK: But isn’t that a general move towards homogeneity as a society right whether it’s the same Instagram face or whether it’s how everyone wants to be the same kind of bride.

MSR: I don’t entirely agree with that. I feel that Fashion is decades ahead of where Interior Design is, when it comes to our comfort with it. Today we’re very happy to be mixing and matching to represent ourselves sartorially. I feel like people aren’t dressing head-to-toe one brand anymore and dress more interestingly now.

Look at the number of Indian homegrown brands, both in jewellery like yours, and in the fashion world. So much so you don’t actually have to buy clothes from Zara. I’m so happy, I don’t come back with tones out things from abroad now because I feel like I can buy from my favourite brands from within the country.

NK: I think specifically India does it well, I mean I don’t see this same in other places which have strong craft traditions. I think India has developed this language of relevance for old crafts really well.

MSR: I agree, it’s such a great time to be buying Indian fashion and jewellery.

NK: Speaking of, I want to start with an early jewellery memory.

MSR: My jewellery memories, in typical fashion, go back to my mum. Coming from a Malyali family, we’re obsessed with gold. I absolutely hated it back then, but of course, I’ve come right back to it. Now I have two nose pins and one of them is gold – on a valuable piece of real estate on my face.

My mum would always say that your hands, your neck, your earlobes shouldn’t be left unadorned. It’s a very Indian thing; you need to have adornment. The idea of not wearing a pair of earrings was horrifying for her. The other thing I’ve adopted from her straight off the bat is her love of gold hoops, she always wore them when I was growing up. I bought mine from a Kerala jeweller, with this sort of hammered texture that I’ve only seen on these 22k gold ones in Kerala. I’m wearing them right now and it’s a standard piece of jewellery for me.  It’s straight off my mother’s dressing table, though I probably would never admit it to her.

I have a very strong memory of my mum’s bangles because she’d always come home and remove her jewellery but her bangles always stayed on because they were always a little tight. She doesn’t wear as many now, she’d wear almost a dozen gold bangles. You could hear my mother approaching by the sound of her bangles, like a warning sign. And she had all these different combinations, always mixing and matching different ones depending on the sari she was wearing. So, I have a very distinct memory of how she put those things together and in my middle age, as we all do, I’ve taken my mum’s jewellery language to heart.

Mostly because I’m busy, I wear the same pieces over and over again. At one point I looked at everything else and I was like what is the point of all this stuff. One of my sons is extremely keen on my jewellery and the first thing he does when he comes home is take some small thing, maybe one of my chains, and put it together with something else and stack them. He loves both the gold and the silver, and he’ll wear my rings because my fingers are tiny. The things that I was worried wouldn’t get any play because I don’t wear them so much anymore, I didn’t have to worry about that. He wears it all.

NK: You spoke about being Malyali and India has many vast jewellery traditions; I want to know about a piece from your jewellery tradition that’s particularly special to you.

MSR: It’s a piece that I got when I got married, my ex-husband bought it for me. You don’t get these kinds of pieces anymore because the quality of work has come down quite a bit. It was based on the pepper vine. What is interesting about a lot of pieces in Kerala is they all have inspiration from nature. So, we have the Manga Mala which looks like the mango, and then there’s the Kasu Mala which is like the coin one. Mine I particularly like because it’s looks very much like a cluster of pepper vines and I really love it because its flexible but a sturdy piece. Back when we lived in Dubai, I’d go to jewellery shops with my mum, and the main thing was always the weight. And one of the things I really love about this piece is that it’s a heavy piece. 

NK: Now vs Then, what are the pieces that draw you in towards making a purchase, or not necessarily even making a purchase, but what draws you in?

MSR: Now, because life keeps changing, I’m at a stage where I’m on the road quite a lot, I travel and I’m always in between houses, so I have my standard stuff. I like things that I can wear with all sorts of things. I also don’t like to change my jewellery very drastically when I’m wearing Indian clothes. I wear saris a lot, but I don’t like the costumery of changing my jewellery when I wear a sari and being from top to bottom ‘ethnic’ as it were. I try to leave my jewellery pieces to still be adaptable to whether it’s a sari or a pair of jeans or whatever, so that it moves with things.

We don’t have a diamond culture in Kerala, so it was never a part of my growing up but I now really like the idea of buying a set of diamond bangles. I have extremely small wrists and one of the things I always remember from my mum was that they were always tight around her wrist. So, I love the idea of having a stack of the same thing and I think that’s very much because I have this very strong visual memory of my mum having that, of being able to wear that through and through.

The other thing I now really hunt for is vintage silver pieces. A wardrobe staple of mine is these three kadas. They’re from the Rabari tribe in Gujarat, I found them when I was travelling there, and they just fit. I always gravitate towards signature things; I love strong pieces with a story. I have these two vintage ruby bangles, one of the first pieces of jewellery that I bought myself many years ago and I really love the fact that they travelled God knows where and found themselves on my wrist. So, things that have a story speak to me now. You reach a stage where your assessment of value changes a lot so it’s really about the inherent value of the piece not in so far as the price tag but just where is it coming from, how does that represent me, what does it say about me, and how does it fit into my life. 

By Natasha Khurana

Photography Kiran K Naidu