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Chanda Chaudhary

Seeking Avant-Garde Design and Authentic Luxe

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Sometimes I write about things twirling around in my head – good, bad, supernal or vile. And days which are constantly filled with love, life and all things spinning.

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Chanda Chaudhary

Aesthete. Storyteller. Wanderer. Chanda is a lover of design, craftsmanship and individualistic style. She’s best known for hosting long champagne lunches filled with stories and tales of adventure, living life on her own terms and making the ordinary, extraordinary. She lives and works in Goa, India.

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The pool may be empty but stories are plenty - after all this is Finca Vigia - Hemingway's home in Havana posing as 7/15 in my #empty series ******** The Finca Vigia is a sun drenched, breezy estate perched high on a hill about 15 miles from Havana. Run as a museum today, the curators chose to leave the house as a chronicle of Hemingway's life in it. His passion for art, music, his love for hunting and trophies from an African safari, his papers and books (9,000 in all) are arranged and displayed just as Hemingway had left them. His clothes still hang in the wardrobe, leather moccasins lie next to his typewriter, a ceramic bowl by Pablo Picasso sits next to a lizard preserved in formaldehyde. Lucky charms in all shapes and sizes are scattered around the house, for Hemingway was rather superstitious and felt unprotected in their absence. ********* The pool, at the time the largest in Cuba, was the centre-stage of Hemingway's lunch parties and moonlit sojourns. Apparently Ava Gardner swam in nude in it on several occasions. The house as such witnessed America's heady romance with Cuba as well as the Fidel's rise to power and the growing tensions between the two countries. This is also where the author wrote his Nobel Prize winning novel 'The Old man and the Sea' and manuscripts of A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream which were published posthumously. *********** Walking around the main house and peeping through the windows (entry is restricted to state officials and guests only) brings a visitor in an almost active relationship with Hemingway's own character. The Finca is part of his immortality and a life which was larger than life itself. #havana #cuba #placetobe #hemingway #passionpassport

Monsoon comes to Goa! A view from my room Fragrance of this first shower, the dancing trees, a relief from the stifling heat - It feels as though rain not just quenches thirst of earth but also my heart! What a wonderful way to start Monday. Hope you are having an equally beautiful day. Today it's nature which is #curatingmylife #nofilterneeded

This ancient seat of one of world's oldest and greatest universities now lies in ruin - this is Nalanda posing as 6/15 in my #empty series Nalanda, a term derived from a combination of three Sanskrit Words - Na+Alam+Daa - meant ‘no stopping of the gift of knowledge’. Founded by Buddhist monks around 2,500 years ago, Nalanda was an extraordinary centre of excellence for art and learning. It remained so for a period of about 700 years beginning 6th century till the 13th century AD. Second only to the world's oldest university Takshila which is in present day Pakistan (and a site I've not yet had the privilege to visit.) When Nalanda was at its peak, it hosted about 10,000 students and renowned faculty of fifteen hundred teachers who came here to study or teach from all over Asia. The mighty library of the Nalanda University was called 'Dharma Gunj' or Mountain of Truth. The library is said to be composed of hundreds and thousands of volumes of books which were housed in three buildings which rose to nine stories each. It is said that when a Muslim invader Khilji burnt the library, the fires continued for almost six months before the last of the books turned to ashes. A UNESCO protected site, the current excavations extend over an area of about 15,000 sq ft meters - estimated to be about 10% of the original university site. What I find most ironic is that the location of Nalanda is now in an Indian state called Bihar, which is one of the poorest states in the country, with astonishingly high crime rate and fairly low literary and education parameters. On the brighter side, govt is taking some impressive steps and I hope for the sake of Bihar that someday soon history will repeat itself and the gift of knowledge will flow through these shores again 😇 #traveljournal #traveldiary #hope #curatingmylife

Not a blade of grass, not a tree in sight - these barren yet formidable Tri Cime di Lavaredo pose as 5/15th picture in my #empty series ---- No area in the European Alps is as rich in legends as the Italian Dolimites. Most historians believe that Ladin people - still living in the Dolomite mountains, still speaking Ladin language and conserving their rich oral culture, customs and traditions - descent from of an ancient Iron Age tribe conquered by the Romans in 15BC. Ladin oral tradition is very rich and has many a historical legends and tales - a different one for most of the peaks, which btw, is my favorite part about hiking in the Dolomiti 😇 --- Though many of these tales are extraordinary, I personally love the story of a dwarf king Laurin and his Rose Garden. Blessed with an unparelleled gift for magic, Laurin was rich, handsome, gentle - he had everything, well - except a wife. So he was very glad when he found out that the king of Etsch was searching for a groom for his beautiful daughter Similde. In a quest to find the most suitable groom the king had arranged a knight tournament for potential candidates. All peers of the environs were invited, excepting king Laurin (as he was a dwarf). Angry at the exclusion, Laurin decided to go there all the same - wearing his magic cap which made him invisible. --- As soon as the dwarf king saw Similde, he immediately fell in love with her and without further ado he lifted her on his horse and rode away. Shortly after the knights noted the disappearance and followed him to his rose garden. Invisible as Lurin was, the knights still found him out because the roses would move each time the king moved and finally managed to capture the king of the dwarfs. ------ Laurin felt betrayed by its rose garden and so he execrated it: No one should every see its beauty again – neither by day nor at night. In his bane he had forgotten about the dusk and dawn. Therefore during these times of the day king Laurin’s rose garden blooms again and again: in the shape of the famous alpenglow, which is when I do bulk of my hiking in this region - in a hope to find a glimpse of the legendary rose garden #curatingmylife

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