Invites EGO to Her Manhattan Pad
By Radhika Singh

At the entrance of Donna D'Cruz's Gramercy Park apartment are two figures. Shiva and Shakti, the male and female energies of the world. Dangling from Shakti's slender fingers is a diamond studded set of headphones that Dolce and Gabana gifted Donna because she DJs for so many upscale parties. Donna is the founder of raSa music which markets and celebrates music from all over the world.

EGO: When did you move here?

DC: April 26 1991. Anzac day, which is like the Australian Memorial Day, is on the 25th of April, so I arrived the next day. I came to New York with $400 in my pocket and one phone number of a one person that I hoped to meet given to me by a friend in Melbourne.I knew.

EGO: Why New York?

DC: Well, really, why not New York? New York represents the universe in so many ways. New York’s energy is divinely female. She seems hard and abrasive at first, but, like a courtesan, she will seduce you if you know how to lover her. You have to let her accept you, find you, love you. And she doesn’t love everyone. You can tell who’s going to survive and who isn’t. New York is not for everyone. If you have an idea, she dares you to pursue it, and if you do, she lets you survive. London, Paris, no other place has quite the infrastructure, the melding system, that New York does. If you’re an entrepreneur New York is perfect. You can make a living here if you have the balls to do it. And if you have compassion in New York, she’ll let you survive here. You have to see the goodness in everyday things, to talk to the taxi drivers, to notice the few trees, to acknowledge the homeless people. If you stop for the every day moments, the city opens up to you.

EGO: Can you name some interior designers/architects that you admire?

	RaSa's Website

DC: I absolutely love Wayne Turett. He heads up Turett Collaborative Architects here in New York. These walls are made of Venetian plaster. There are only two people in New York who do it- there are so many layers to it. At night they emit a divine luminescence, it just comes off the plaster. The lighting was done by Riko Espinet. He has this beautiful space for emerging designers in Greenpoint- where he has all kinds of art, sculpture and then practical things like chairs and sconces.

My favorite architect is Jeffrey Bawa- his work is beyond incredible. He became an architect at 38, which is relatively old in that field. He came from a wealthy Ceylonese family. Its easy to work outside in Ceylon because of the accommodating climate. He has this way of inviting you in, of making the outside look like the inside, of designing courtyards and putting up mirrors so that the outside looks like the inside. His use of lighting and greenery, of mother nature, is superb.

And Christian Liaigre- his work is simple and elemental. He’s the one whose furniture is in the Mercer Hotel, his stuff is sold through Holly Hunt. He marries Wenge, which I imagine is very hard to work with because its such a hard wood, with energies like heavy dark wood and leather. His ideals have inspired a lot of the woodwork in the apartment.

EGO: In what ways have you and your husband chosen to collaborate on creating this space?

DC: When Architectural Digest came to do an issue on the apartment, we talked about how the genre for the apartment is Italiano Indian. Tom partly Italian, and this furniture was made in Milan. The stones that you see around the house are from Brazil and India, all over the place really. The granite on the fireplace and table tops and backboards is from a place near Cochin, where my family is from, in South India. The wood from the coffee table and the window over there is Wenge wood from Africa. These are temple windows from North India and we’ve put a mirror in the back of it. We have a huge temple door in the bedroom with a mirror behind it, against the wall, and it creates this incredible vortex effect. That piece leaning against the wall over there is a massage table from South India. You see the cradle at the top of it? That’s where the head would go and then the body would be massaged on the length of it. Called a ‘malash’ table, it’s for Ayurvedic massage- its soaked in coconut oil. The crystals are from different places we’ve traveled. We love to travel and pick up things that we see around the world and bring them home because they really carry the energy of the places we go. People have asked me to design their homes for them and I say ‘oh no I’m not a designer but I can certainly go shopping for you [laughs].’

EGO: Can you point out some objects that you like, and their stories?

DC: There used to be a Natraja on the fireplace where the Buddha is now. We changed him after 911 because Natraja has such an enormous energy. Natraja can be so violent, so emphatic about his point of view. Our home should have the opposite energy. The Buddha is now an altar for music. Every time Tom or I come out with a new album we put it on Buddha’s lap. Right now, Buddha is cradling Rasa Music’s latest album, Samsara.

This ball is from a store in San Francisco called Alabaster. Talk about synchronicity, we walked into this store, a truly stunning store, and you know we travel all over the world and buy the things we see, and maybe ninety percent of the things in this store were things we owned, or had seen on our travels. It was like touching your own stories but in someone else’s house. The man who owned this store, Nelson Blackcort, a beautiful man, had just written this book about angels and we were talking about it, and the places he’s been, and I asked him about music. He told me that he had just been to Barcelona and bought the best cd he’d ever heard. It was Rasa Exotica. He said, “it represents a blend of cultures of all the places I’ve been to in the world- and you can dance to it!” and I took out my card and showed him who I was. He put his hand to his heart and said to me, “ You are also someone who believes that angels exist” and he gave me his book.

EGO: RaSa is all about creating a sacred environment using scent, ambient sound and flavor in order to encourage an immersion in a sensual and spiritual life. How have you created this environment in your home?

DC: Everyday I have certain rituals. Ritual locks in intention. I walk into the house, take off my shoes and light incense to clear the energy of the day. Lighting candles, listening to beautiful music, gives me a space to decompress the day, to create an exhale. It’s so common for people to run into the house, hit the answering machine, watch the time. We should be saying ‘thank you’ for our homes, this beautiful place to come home to. No matter how big it is, no matter what we have in it. Our first room in New York was tiny- I could put out my arms and touch both walls. We put up silk on the walls and made a little tent. You have to have respect for what you have, to be thankful.

EGO: How does the environment you have created in your home affect the way you respond to environment outside your home?

DC: Rasa’s three things are sensuality, spirituality and style. For years people wanted to keep their spiritual and sensual lives separate from style. I wanted to create a paradigm to merge them. We’re at a point in humanity where we must dare to merge them. We have to have the same face with our family, with our friends and lovers, at work, understanding that Buddha and Krishna are inside the man next to us on the train who is annoying the hell out of us. We have to live every moment that way- it’s hard but we have to take the time to breathe, to relax, to find our centers. Its here [pointing at her chest, her head] spirituality is here. In the car, when the AC doesn’t work, its hot, we’re late, there’s traffic for miles, that is when we must find the god within us. I try to live like that at home.

EGO: What kind of environment does raSa’s music create? If the whole world were listening to raSa music, what would it look like?

DC: Really working as a DJ is taking people on a sonic journey that’s transformative. Usually before I play I ask for an audience profile- what they’re listening to, what they wear, what they buy, where they live, where they’re from- so that I can give them a magic carpet ride.

RaSa’s music is bestselling. That speaks for a greater issue- people are asking for a greater meaning, they’re asking themselves, ‘there’s more right?’ It’s across the board. Look at yoga- people were drawn to yoga for the exercise and are now compelled to do it three times a week. It’s an awakening. Their spirits are finally connecting with their daily lives. It happens first here, in the urban setting of New York, but it will trickle down.

Every weekend, Donna retreats to her house in upstate New York. She tantalizes me with details: a room full of masks, “the root of all masks is in ancient Greek tragedy- we have one face for the public and one for the private,” and a boat from Cochin whose tips curl up, “we gutted it and lined it with a blood red cushion so it makes a wonderful seat. You must come up and photograph there sometime.” I look forward to the privilege.