JAIVEER JOHAL'S CHENNAI HOME IS

FLANKED BY THE ADYAR RIVER ON ONE SIDE AND THE BAY OF BENGAL ΟΝ THE OTHER, AND ANCHORED IN A SEA OF ART AMIDST WHICH HE LIVES IN THIS BOLDLY DESIGNED ONEBEDROOM APARTMENT

- VAISHNAVI NAYEL TALAWADEKAR

Ask Jaiveer Johal how he came to be a collector and the Delhi-raised, Chennaibased entrepreneur instantly answers, "I've done it for as long as I can remember." He recalls, as a child, he'd squirrel away pretty things: crystal bowls, beautiful briefcases, silver plates. "If anything ever went missing, people always knew where to find it," he adds, quickly clarifying that said thieved objects "were limited to the confines of my own home". Before him, no one in the family-Johal's grandfather, Sardar Darbara Singh was a former chief minister of Punjab and his father was a scion of a successful conglomerate-devotedly amassed art. "They bought it to fit this wall or that. If there wasn't space for it, it was out of the question," he recalls of his parents and grandparents, who frequently purchased idiosyncratic pieces on their travels.

As he grew up, so did his interest in collecting. First it was books, then antique maps, and afterwards, during his years in London where he moved to study global politics, piquant art of all manner. He notes that he doesn't use everything he buys. "Being surrounded by books you haven't read shows you how little you know. It keeps you humble," he says of his "anti-library", named after the eponymous term coined by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's no different with art; Most of his collection is in storage. A glorious gallimaufry in his apartment in Chennai's MRC Nagar is but a microcosm of his artistic expression. Many of his pieces among them Zarina Hashmi's Home is a Foreign Place (1999), displayed opposite the bar-are informed by a spirit of displacement, of a sense of isolation, sentiments that have haunted him through the years.