Is your home reflective of who you are, what you value and how you look at life and living? Is it a place one can unwind and relax and think at leisure? is it a place where one feels welcome and reassured, is it a place where you can literally put up your feet and chill? These may seem like odd and superfluous queries, you may rightly retort, but seriously, when you think about it, does your home give you all this? do we ask all this from our homes? I don't think so. Most of us, the high flying sort who build big houses (and smaller hearts) think of homes as houses, a place of course where you live, but also a place which is sort of a gallery of what you possess. Homes then become more like cluttered shops and museums of quirks.
I have seen hideous houses in this country, they are palatial and full of stuff, ugly stuff more so! they are eye-sores on the outside and painful to the core on the inside. They all look and feel the same. Spanish/Moroccan/Neocolonial villas on the outside, a mix of porticoes, stone, arches,, Doric pillars, high roofs, cantilevers, pergolas, mixed rock walls !! all somehow churned together to some monstrous effect. On the inside, there is 'confusion worse confounded' to quote Milton. Every thing is going on, there are wooden floors, and marble floors, there are tiles to give the effect of stone, marble, granite what not. Then there is the ever present Magnolia paint (play safe) it is inevitably found in every house in the larger cities of this country, with some splashes of a colored wall (always orangey-terracotta, WHY?.)
Then the best part, over-priced and over-bearing uncomfortable furniture, its bought to impress the family and the friends brigade. The walls then become a canvas for all kinds of "art" aaahhhaa every Pakistani with a bit a cash-to-spare is a connoisseur of art now (the artists are happy.) The paintings are in the same color ways as the room (matched to the theme uffff!) then the tit bits, the lamps from Dubai, the glass from Bangkok and so on. There are colored glass bottles and over-sized prayer beads strewn about a golden platter! (no kidding every house) then we have have the precious crystal (Jesus) what for????
Next on the list are the carpets, thousands of rupees treaded upon by glass slippers. In the bedrooms are the classic bedroom-sets, huge carved bed, dresser with the mirror??(who uses those) and side tables all matching matching!!!!! urgh!
Where are the homes that reflect with panache the likes of the people inhabiting them, where is originality? where is creativity??? where is a bit of humor and a bit of craziness in the homes that make them speak out, that makes them a place to cherish and a place that tells who you are???
I want to see homes with personality!
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