Vastu

Vastu Shastra is the Vedic science of building and placement. It reads a space through the five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — and the eight directions, and asks whether the way a building is arranged supports the people living in it. The north-east is treated as the source of light and clarity, the south-east as the seat of fire and therefore the natural home of the kitchen, the south-west as the anchor of stability and best suited to the main bedroom and the weight of the structure.

It is less mystical than its reputation suggests. A great deal of classical Vastu is observation about light, airflow, thermal comfort and how people move through rooms, encoded over centuries into rules. That is why so many of its prescriptions still hold up in a modern apartment: heavy storage on the south-west, the kitchen away from the north-east corner, an entrance that is clear and well lit, sleeping with your head to the south.

The reasonable objection to Vastu is that most people cannot move a wall, and should not be told to. Almost nobody who books a consultation is in a position to relocate a bathroom, and any consultant whose first recommendation is structural work is not being practical with you.

So the remedies given here are corrective rather than destructive, and they are ordered by impact so you know what actually matters if you only do three things. Placement, colour, light, weight distribution, mirrors, water features and element balancing do the overwhelming majority of the work. Where a genuine structural defect exists and cannot be corrected any other way, it is named honestly along with the energetic remedies that reduce its effect.

A residential audit looks at the entrance, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the staircase and any pooja space, and reads how the family's individual charts interact with the plan. Bedroom direction and the placement of the head of the bed are the two corrections clients most often feel first.

A commercial audit focuses on where money and decisions sit: the owner's or manager's desk and its facing direction, the cash counter or accounts area, the reception and main entrance, the storeroom, and the seating of client-facing staff. For retail, the placement of the till and the sightline from the door tend to matter more than anything else in the fit-out.

The best time to consult is before you commit — while you are choosing a plot, comparing properties, drawing plans or planning a renovation, when the correction is a line on a drawing rather than a builder's invoice.

You send a floor plan — an architect's drawing, a real-estate listing plan, or a clear hand sketch with rough dimensions — along with a compass reading of the main entrance direction and photographs of the key rooms. Your phone's compass app is accurate enough; the exact method is explained when you book.

The audit is then walked through with you on a video call, room by room, with the plan shared on screen. You receive a written report afterwards setting out each correction, why it is prescribed and in what order to make them, so you can work through it at your own pace and budget.