Bollywood Ending

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

 
Carved marble columns at the Chaturmukha Jain temple in Ranakpur. Photo by Carl D'Aquino.

As a partner at D'Aquino Monaco, Carl D'Aquino has helmed a slew of celebrated projects and been inducted into Interior Design's Hall of Fame. But he confesses one work-related regret: "I never make enough time for travel."

 
A doorway of carved marble at the Amber Fort near Jaipur, India. Jaipur's Jantar Mantar observatory; photos by Carl D'Aquino.

He did manage to get away for 18 days for a first-time trip to India, where his itinerary included an obligatory stop at the Taj Mahal and an afternoon transfixed by hand-carved marble columns at a Jain temple. Surveying the 22-mile wall that surrounds the 15th-century Kumbhalgarh Fort, while transporting, was perhaps bested by the adventure of traveling through the countryside in cars and trains. "I realized that the experience of getting from one place to another—the congestion, the sheer visual confusion—is the actual India," he says.

 
The D'Aquino Monaco partner wearing a kurta at a wedding in Bangalore; photo by Faisal Kahn. Achal Kapila and Shalmali Radha Ganapathy Karnad at their wedding in Bangalore; photo by Carl D'Aquino.


Flower petals arranged on a pavement at the Samode Palace in Jaipur; photo by Carl D'Aquino.

The catalyst for the trip was an invitation from close friends, actor-director-playwright Girish Karnad and his physician wife, Saraswathy Ganapathy, to their daughter's three-and-a-half-day wedding, the kind of extravaganza accessible to most Westerners only on a Bollywood movie screen. "There was sensational food and constant music, including the most extraordinary private concert around a lake," D'Aquino says. Nearly 2,000 people from 14 countries came to Bangalore for the festivities.

 
A building facade in Agra; photo by Carl D'Aquino. A construction worker carrying wet cement through a courtyard at the Amber Fort; photo by Faisal Khan.

The first evening, he sat at a table with guests from Stockholm, Nairobi, and Shanghai. Foreigners aside, he was awestruck at the complexities of interweaving the various strands of Indian society, in this case members of the Parsi and Brahman communities as well as the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement that rejects the caste system. Then there were the intricacies of mingling four separate religious traditions in cuisines, costumes, and ceremonies.


Temporary henna decoration for the Bangalore wedding; photo by Carl D'Aquino.

Whether D'Aquino was indulging in Technicolor revelry, squeezing through the crowds at a Delhi market, or searching remote areas for indigenous crafts, the designer in him was always amassing inspiration. "All the textures of India—the extraordinary carvings, frescoes, mosaics, and fabrics—will always remain with me," he says. And appear, we can assume, in his work.


A shuttered room at the City Palace Udaipur; photo by Carl D'Aquino.