The living room is an eclectic mix and has a comfortable, lived in feel

Just as she keeps the stage for her theatrical productions simple yet effective, theatre artiste Lushin Dubey’s home too is clean-cut and elegant. For ‘props’ she’s brought back curios from across the world that lend the space a multi-cultural charm.

Her first-floor flat in south Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave is actually part of a family home — a four-storey apartment block — that sits on a 4,500sqft plot. A garden in front, a driveway on the right and an annexe with the domestic help quarters at the back, all hark to a typical 1980s design for Delhi bungalows. The ground floor is occupied by her mother and there’s an apartment for each of her siblings — actor Lillete Dubey and her brother. “It was my late father’s wish that all his children stay with him under one roof,” she says.

Lushin Dubey loves spending time in her quiet sun-deck room that doubles as the family’s board game zone; (below) a porcelain Don Quixote figurine from Madrid in the living area

Dubey shuttles between Delhi and New York several times a year since her husband Pradeep Dubey is a professor of economics at State University of New York, Stony Brook.

The Dubeys’ three-bedroom home has imprints of her family in almost every nook. You can trace at least three generations of the family’s journey through pictures. Some of the notable ones are photographs of Dubey’s childhood and those of her daughters — the US-based Ilina and Tara. “I have a simple home yet I like to embellish it with my family history,” she says with a smile.

You enter the apartment through a small, snug lobby. The red marble texture flooring has been left untouched from the time the house was constructed 25 years ago.

Dubey has broken away from the tradition of having a conventional dining room due to a shortage of space. When she hosts a dinner, she serves the meal in the lobby since it’s easy to access the kitchen from there. But a modest dining space is tucked away to the right of the kitchen where the family usually dines.

An elegant wooden installation in the lobby grabs your attention. It’s a six-feet tall carving that depicts Lord Ganesha in different postures. The couple bought this piece 28 years ago from Mahabalipuram for a mere Rs 800. To the left of this installation is the drawing room-cum-study.

The living room has been split into two sections. Dubey’s choice of furniture is simple — on the left is straight-lined, leather furniture and to the right is a cane seating arrangement. The ‘study’ is tucked away in a corner near the cane section with books fitted into a white L-shaped bookshelf. “My mathematician husband has a huge collection of books. This corner makes for a perfect study,” says Dubey.

The corner of the drawing room that has been turned into a study is crammed with books belonging to Dubey’s mathematician husband, Pradeep; (below) the antique, bar-table that the couple bought in Jerusalem is used to display their silverware

But when Dubey has her thinking cap on, she prefers her quiet sundeck — a tiny room at the back of the drawing room with lots of windows. The deck floods with sunlight during winter and is perfect for times when her daughters are back in India (Ilina studies at Harvard while Tara is working). For, the family likes to play board games and chess on their chess set which is made of nellikai wood.

Of the curios and pieces that the couple has collected over the years, Dubey is particularly attached to a wooden bar table that they picked up from the Hebrew quarter in Jerusalem. “It’s an antique that’s over 100 years old. My husband found it nearly 30 years ago,” says Dubey. She uses it to display her silverware.

She also likes a Don Quixote artifact — a large figurine in porcelain — that her husband purchased in Madrid, Spain.

On the other side of the house, to the right of the lobby, are the bedrooms. Dubey and her husband occupy the master bedroom, while the second biggest is for Ilina. And even though she’s away, everything in her room has been kept the way she left it. A small room next to Ilina’s is Tara’s. Though she moved to the US nearly eight years ago, there’s a poster that she stuck on a wall when she was 16.

“I could easily just throw all this aside and make a slick home. But I don’t want to do it. This house feels special and says a lot about us,” she adds.

Photographs by Rupinder Sharma