The artist’s iconic red brick house is now Banjara Melting Pot, an upmarket seafood restaurant.
Always beautiful, MF Husain’s red brick house in Koramangala is now an upmarket restaurant, by Bengaluru-based Goldfinch Hotels, who leased the house solely for this purpose.
Known for its wide open spaces and a tree in the middle of the plot that had been integrated into the architecture, the house built in the nineties was home to Husain as well as the venue for the studio-gallery Husain Sankalana, which hosted art exhibitions, book readings, music performances and film screenings.
“The place was shut down in 2007, almost a year after Husain sahib went on a self-imposed exile. It was only when we started scouting for locations that we found this bungalow and it matched our requirement. Its legacy also attracted us towards it,” says Gaurav Shetty, MD, Goldfinch Hotels.
Though Shetty is not sure when the house came on the market – sources say his daughter sold it after he left India following persecution by right-wing groups – he says his company leased to set up a second outlet of its seafood restaurant, Banjara Melting Pot.
Along with displaying the artist’s picture prominently inside, along with prints of some of his paintings, the restaurant has retained the entire exterior structure with the famous brick masonry and the leaning tree trunk.
The other memorabilia is a red letter-box said to have been painted by the artist himself. The letter-box is something of a story often told in this neighbourhood – older residents recall how people would mistake it for an actual post-box and drop letters in. When Husain realized this he took it inside, but it had already passed into legend.
