The inner voice

For most of my life, I never thought of myself as a creative person. I valued clarity, efficiency, and function. Creativity, I assumed, was a gift reserved for artists, designers, and writers — not for someone like me.

And yet, while building Sukoon, I found myself exploring and expressing creativity in ways I hadn’t expected.

It began not with grand visions but with small decisions. Choosing live-edge wood instead of straight-cut planks. Keeping salvaged beams for their story as much as their strength. Noticing how the maroon behind a Ganesh painting could quietly reappear in the polished wood backing of terracotta pieces nearby. Letting frames shift from rectangular to round as one moved from stairway to landing, suggesting both continuity and change. In the garden, layering plants not just for coverage but for composition — leaf shape, color, and structure creating a kind of visual music.

What surprised me was how natural it felt. These weren’t arbitrary choices; they flowed from ways of seeing I had already learned elsewhere in life.

From work came the idea of user journeys. In leading a software product business, I saw how design shifted from mere functionality to shaping the experience of moving through a system. At Sukoon, I began to see my home and garden in the same way — as journeys. How would someone’s eye, and then their body, move through each space? What would echo, and what would shift, to make that journey feel whole?

From photography came the habit of composition. Years of framing through a lens had taught me to pay attention to balance, depth, and flow. It became instinct to treat each corner as a frame: what leads the gaze, what provides harmony, what quietly surprises.

I realized, then, that creativity isn’t something external to us, reserved for a chosen few. It is a way of noticing, of letting influences from different parts of life flow into new contexts. For me, Sukoon became the canvas where those influences converged.

Function and form stopped being opposites. They became partners. And in that partnership, I found a creative dimension within myself I had long overlooked.