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Instead of trophies alone, you find 176 bougainvillea plants ringing the edge, bursting with colour. “Why 176? Because my birthday is the 17th of June.
He lived out of locker rooms, travelled with only a few hundred dollars in traveller’s cheques, and often lost early in small tournaments far from home.
Paes has said the plants mark his birthday on the 17th of June. “On the periphery of the whole terrace, I’ve got 176 bougainvillaeas,” he explained to Brut with a smile during a house tour. Leander Paes has spent decades making India proud on tennis courts around the world. But step onto the terrace of his Mumbai home in Bandra, and you see a different side of the man. It is a simple, personal touch that turns his private space into something close to a flowering garden in the middle of the city. The number is no accident. The choice feels warm and deliberate, the kind of detail that makes a home feel lived-in rather than just designed. In a city where private open space is rare and expensive, Paes has carved out a quiet green corner. The terrace gets plenty of sunlight, and the bougainvilleas thrive along the edges, bringing bright paper-like bracts in shades that shift with the season. He jokes that his love for plants comes from his Bengali and Portuguese roots. The garden does more than look pretty. It softens the hard edges of city life. Mumbai moves fast, and Bandra itself is a busy, sought-after neighbourhood. Yet up on that terrace the pace slows. The early years were tough. What kept him going was a deeper purpose. As a boy he would polish his father’s Olympic medal every Sunday after church and ask about the five rings. He wanted to show that Indians could stand among the best in the world. That same steady focus now shows in the careful way he has built his home. The interiors use warm, simple finishes, large windows and natural light rather than flashy luxury. The terrace garden remains the heart of it, a place where the man who once competed in seven straight Olympics can sit among flowers and remember the long road.
Today the Mumbai home feels like a sanctuary.