For the Bhasin siblings, Goa is the perfect place for a creative reset

The road to costume designer Arjun Bhasin’s house in Goa’s Ucassaim village is unpaved. After turning into several narrow lanes and driving up a steep slope, the car teeters to an uncertain stop. On a remote trail, I double-check Google Maps to make sure we are in the right place. Then, I notice a nameplate peeping out from behind a plant: Bhasins. “We don’t get deliveries here,” Arjun tells me when I meet him amidst a babble of birds chirping in the background.

On a tree outside, two squirrels scurry across a branch. Pink bougainvillea keep falling into the swimming pool. They float in the water as Arjun’s sister, Niharika, a jewellery and costume designer, climbs a tree to check on an injured bird. I quickly realise this Goa home is exactly where it’s meant to be: far away from the chaos of the film sets and city traffic that both siblings spend most of their lives in.

Designed about a decade ago by architect Shonan Purie Trehan, who christened it the ‘The Slow House’, the inside-out living room is draped with colourful fabrics and tchotchkes on the mantel, but it’s the green view that serves as its real adornment. It’s where the two creative minds—one from New York, the other from Mumbai—can afford the quiet privileges of escape and reinvention.

The leisurely time the Bhasins spend in Goa is reminiscent of their growing-up years in Jamshedpur, and this time off allows them to tap into some of that childhood creativity. “We didn’t have much to do,” Niharaka muses, “I’d read at the top of a guava tree every afternoon. Arjun would sit in some corner and read.” Like their family home, this house too has two walls lined with books stacked in bewildering configurations: between Vivienne Westwood by Claire Wilcox, Thierry Mugler: Fashion Fetish Fantasy and The Bikini Book, some fiction peeks out.

Despite their parents working corporate jobs—their mother at a bank and their father at Tata—creativity came easy in their household. The family purposefully spent much of their time discussing and analysing books, art, colours, and most importantly, films. “We grew up on a lot of Hollywood musicals and technicolour films of the ’50s and ’60s because that’s what our parents really liked,” Arjun recalls, “And those are the inspirations we share to this day.” Niharika—a self-proclaimed Gene Kelly stan—recalls her father’s movie room. “The whole room was filled with hundreds of VCR and VCP cassettes lined up. Every day, we’d all watch a film together.”

As costume designers, the siblings may share the same inspirations, but their creative processes vary. Their personal style too is different and unique—Niharika with her turquoise-tinged hair is most often seen in colourful and whacky pairings and is a foil to Arjun’s muted breeziness; his wry smile at odds with her generous laugh. While Arjun studied film and design at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts, Niharika stresses that she got into the profession by pure fluke. “I think they wanted him, didn’t have the money and hired me,” she laughs. “Because he’s studied this, has more theoretical knowledge, and is such a perfectionist he tends to overthink things and gets creative blocks.” Niharika’s process, on the other hand, is more referential. “The minute I’m signed onto a film that’s, let’s say, based in Delhi, I’ll just go to Delhi, sit in cafes, walk around, and figure out how to do it.”

There’s a playful dynamic through the interview, one that you can only expect from close siblings. When Arjun isn’t watching, she confesses that her brother is the creative genius out of the two (and quickly warns: “If you put this in the story, I’ll say I was misquoted”), but Niharika too has established her place in the Indian film industry with projects like Rock On!! (2008), Band Baaja Baaraat (2010) and The Dirty Picture (2011).

To the duo, the most important part of costume design is understanding a character. In fact, to immerse herself in the world of a film, free from biases, Niharika always asks directors to not reveal which actors will be on a project when she’s dreaming up the costumes. Once she knows a character inside-out, what she brings to their costumes is the attention to detail. “I always tell them, ‘If your film is successful, people will notice these little things.’ That’s why Bombay Velvet (2015) was my saddest project. My team and I worked so hard on every detail but ultimately no one even watched the film,” she confesses.

But there are far too many successes too: Take the 55-year-old’s attention to detail for Rock On!! “They wanted the four band members on the poster in plain black T-shirts,” she shares, “I told them, ‘I can’t just put them all in black T-shirts. Their clothes have to say something about their personalities.’” To fulfil her vision, Niharika flew to Bangkok where clothes were chic but cheap. “I went up to this guy and told him I needed four black T-shirts and I needed to screen-print them.” For Farhan Akhtar’s rebellious character, she picked Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and covered the screen print in small silver studs. For Arjun Rampal’s ambitious character, it was a pair of wings. 

Both siblings concede that they bring a contemporary Western touch to Indian films. Arjun started off as an assistant in the costume department of Kama Sutra (1996), but you’ll know him better as the one who cast the orange Hermès Kelly as the iconic Bagwati in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011). By then, the costume designer had already made his mark with crossover films like Monsoon Wedding (2001), Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and The Namesake (2006). Soon, he transitioned to Life of Pi (2012), Sarah Jessica Parker in Divorce (2016) and Gully Boy (2019), but is now mainly focussed on Hollywood projects. His most recent was the teenage Muslim superhero series Ms. Marvel (2022) and the Amy Adams-starrer Nightbitch (2024).

“My favourite part of the job is interacting with people when everyone’s excited about creating and wants to be involved,” he says. “The hardest part is working out the economics of it. You’re always trying to budget. You have limited time. So ultimately, you have to squeeze your vision into these constraints, which can actually be helpful because otherwise a project would never end.”

Goa features in the New Yorker’s life at least once a year, as a punctuated break. The 49-year-old returns here whenever he needs to “cleanse his palate” and wind down. “I put a lot of creativity into making this house,” he says as we sit in a nook outside. “There are fabrics from markets in Africa, Jaipur, even Goa. There’s a clash of textiles and colours everywhere, but it somehow works. I like to sit right here and look at the trees. The green relaxes your eyes and is lovely to look at as opposed to New York, where everything is grey.”

Inside, artworks adorn every wall. The blue head of Mahakaal Bhairav hangs by the back door. Under it, a pair of wooden slippers from the Life of Pi set are reverently placed on a small table. On the kitchen platform, you’ll spot Goa-based artist Aradhana Seth’s artwork near a colourful rooster statue—quintessential to Goa homes—sitting underneath a straw chandelier, another beach-town decor staple.

Niharika, who spends much of her time in Goa when her brother is away, tells me about the birds, lizards and snakes she loves to wake up and check on. “A few months ago, I looked out of my window and saw five tiny snake heads peeping out of that pipe,” she enthuses, “That means they’d probably just hatched.” There’s no hint of fear, just pure excitement. In the hall, she secretly shows me a colourful metal box, then opens it to reveal a collection of mummified butterflies and insects that she’s collected after they lay dead. “I thought he would throw it away, but he hasn’t,” she sighs with relief, pointing towards her brother.

Even in midlife, their sibling energy is at its peak. The two banter constantly as they pose for photos. Like the baby of any family, Arjun is the one who orders his sister around. And like any pair of siblings, their voices become brasher when they speak with each other. Still, it is clear to anyone who meets the two that the bickering is all for show. The siblings are each other’s creative sounding boards, therapists and advisors (“especially when it comes to dealing with actors on set”). But just like any regular pair of siblings, they would rather not admit to these feelings out loud.