BIRDS
It’s a house on a ridge. The valleys and hills stretch before me green and undulating. Something falls on my head. Its a a pod from a cotton tree. I look up and see a giant Malabar squirrel staring at me inquisitively. Behind me is a villa. It’s called Isla’s Ridge.
And Isla is Isla Van Damme better known as LouLou van Damme. A Belgian woman living in the hills of Tamil Nadu in south India.
LV1: ] I came to India to retire in 99. It hasn't worked. Not at all. What a stupid idea I had. What a stupid idea.
Instead she found 16 acres that had once been used to grow coffee and pepper but had been abandoned to monkeys squirrels and wild Indian bison. And she built herself an English style bungalow and a homestay.
This is Sandip Roy at Isla’s Ridge.
But the real story here isn’t the bungalow, beautiful as it is. It’s the woman who built it.
LouLou van Damme is often on the covers of magazine about design and decor. The art she’s collected, her own elegantly casual sense of fashion, shirt and slacks, the beautiful bungalow, open to the hills. A fairy tale life almost but Loulou says not quite
LV2: You have to fight for things. People say I'm lucky, I said. I think I've worked a lot on this.
She was born in India still under British rule. Her Belgian father had a business making picture frames. She says she grew up wild.
LV3:I lived like a monkey. I was a Junglee didn't go to any school until I was nine. I had a little tree house. I used to play with the servants.
She was sent to England to go to boarding school, to be civilised in a way.
LV4: I hated, hated studying. After nine, after eight years in that boarding school, I was finally chucked out because I had a little radio this size, you're not allowed radios.
She ended up in Brussels and opened a shop called Santosh.
LV5: it became quite an iconic shop selling Indian, not Indian clothes, but very wearable by Europeans.
Long before it had become popular LouLou Van Damme was marketing India to the West.
LV6: I think I've always been going against the tide because, you know, to sell Indian based fashion in Belgium, which is the most difficult country in the world, to sell to women, very classical.
She was part of the young and fashionable chic set in Belgium. But while the others partied all night she set her own rules.
LV7: They called me the La Grande Dame. 11:00. Okay, friends, I'm going to bed by 11:00. I used to sleep. Get up at six, go fishing, come back. Everybody's still sleeping at 12. Have my breakfast, live my life.
Eventually the tide brought her back to India. She opened a cafe on a beach in Goa.And somehow ended up building herself a house, but then discovered it didnt have the right permits
LV8: So I demolished my own house, then sold the land afterwards for a good price.
Now she lives in her house on the hills filled with art she has collected all her life. Some valuable. Some not so much. A Magritte lithograph on the wall, a miniature, a large Ganesha, a crystal chandelier, a little copper shoe
LV9: There's nothing expensive. Mm. There's nothing expensive. No. It's all second hand.
But she says though she loves things of beauty she doesn’t really collect anymore.
LV10: I have been a collector and that has a bit stopped. I'm just happy with what I have. And I'm more interested in gardening and learning about birds
She says she wants to go against the tide as she has done all her life.
LV11:Also, it's going a bit against this life we're living now, which is all about consuming. We are pushed, pushed, pushed to consume, to buy, to eat.
Instead she sits on her bed, never locks the doors of the bedroom which open onto the hills and relishes the simple joys of life,
LV12: what is the most joy? I think the fact that I am alone, I do not count on anybody. Um, I think I was made to live alone.
As always swimming against the tide. In style.
LV13: Would you like a cup of Tea? and a nice piece of lemon cake.
This is Sandip Roy in the Pallani Hills for KALW