The bungalow came into our family in 1947. Lord Chamberlain, the Scotsman who had owned it, sold it to our grandfather, Puliyadi Kuppuswami Iyer, a businessman and philanthropist from Madurai. The Chamberlains left for the United Kingdom with two suitcases. Almost everything else stayed - the furniture, the paintings, the bookcases, the brass - and a few of those things are still here. Four generations have now made memories here. The portrait of our grandparents hangs in the dining room. The pear tree on the lawn was planted in the fifties. The boiler room, which used to heat the bath water for the Chamberlains, is now a bedroom in the South wing - you can still see the boilers in pictures we have hung on the wall.

In recent years we have opened the house to guests. We did this for two reasons. We wanted the bungalow to be lived in, not closed up between family visits. And we wanted to share the place with people who would notice the details. The interiors are by Shalini Biswajit, a Chennai-based artist and a member of the family. The black-and-white photographs of Kodaikanal that hang in the bedrooms and the hallways are by Harsha Biswajit, another artist in the family.

We do not run The Dunnottar as a hotel. We run it as a family home that welcomes guests.

— The Puliyadi Family