When I moved to Kotagiri, renovating my home began with two men, one wall, and two small hammers. I looked at those hammers for a long moment. Then I said some things I will not repeat here.
The plan I had not quite thought through
When I decided to renovate the kitchen, I had not quite thought through what “renovating the kitchen” would mean for the business of eating. It meant four months of cooking on a gas stove set up on an old metal cabinet outside my front door. The cabinet was originally used to store gas cylinders. There is a small covered porch like section just outside the main door to the house. That became the kitchen.
It felt like camping. Actually, it felt exactly like the pretend-cooking I used to do as a child — outside, under trees, makeshift, entirely self-sufficient. I did quite enjoy it more than I probably should have.
The ‘Charmingly’ Unhurried Team
The contractor had hired a team that I can only describe as charmingly unhurried. Several of the workers were in their seventies. One woman came every day with the sole purpose of making chai for the team of seven. Work began at 10am, after the changing of clothes. Tea break at 11:30. Lunch from 1 to 2:30. Tea break again at 4. Tools down at 5. Twenty minutes of actual work sandwiched somewhere in the middle, I think, though I was never entirely sure when.
I had come from a world of quarterly targets and regional KPIs — 23 years of corporate life across Mumbai, Singapore, Gurgaon and Dubai, the kind of life where patience is a liability. Here I was on a one-acre tea estate in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris, alone, to start a new chapter. Kotagiri was in a wonderfully but challenging way, the complete opposite of everywhere I had lived and worked.
I learned things about patience that no amount of anything had managed to teach me.
For one month, the wall where the kitchen had been was open. Between me and whatever lived outside was a flimsy partition I’d constructed from my own packing cases, because the contractor had not thought to seal the gap with actual boards. I had asthma. There was construction dust everywhere. EVERY.WHERE. Sophie looked at the whole arrangement with an expression that I can only describe as concern. We holed up in one room upstairs while every other inch of the house was piled with furniture, appliances, books, everything covered in bedsheets.
Then the contractor left. Mid-job. Just — left.
You Adapt.
A second contractor arrived. By this point my fridge was in the bedroom and I had been cooking outside for weeks. I adapted. You do.
The Kitchen I Actually Wanted
The kitchen I designed myself — the pinteresty island with Ikea lights over it, the tiles, the cabinet finish, the sage green, the complimentary granite, chosen on trips to Coimbatore with my mother on video call from Gurgaon to weigh in on the splashbacks. (I remember standing in a tile showroom sending her photos and waiting for her sound opinion.)
It was worth all of it. Every slow hammer blow, every chai break, every meal cooked outside in the rains.
The kitchen is the best room in the house. It is also, for the record, where every Chom Chom Pantry biscuit is made.
— — —
Chom Chom Pantry · Kotagiri, Nilgiris
