Where animals get their own floor: inside Harshal and Lorenzo’s 42-pet log house

When Lorenzo Standen has tended to the family’s pets in the morning—five dogs, two cats, ten rabbits, seven parrots, four guinea pigs, eight chickens, two roosters, three gerbils, a frog, and some fish—he heads to the neighbor’s horse stable.

After that, he starts the car in the yard of their home in Mäntsälä, Finland, and drives to work. His spouse Harshal Karvande stays home working, designing mobile games for the Finnish game company Rovio.

In the car, Lorenzo switches on Iskelmäradio or Suomipop and starts singing along.

“Badly, I must admit!” he says.

Lorenzo loves his job at a pet store in Espoo and even enjoys the commute, much like many other things in their new home country. The couple moved from India to Finland just over four years ago.

Music is a great way to learn the language. In the car and with the home karaoke equipment, they often play artists like Kaija Koo, Bess, Behm and Olavi Uusivirta.

They also sang at Christmas, when a large group of guests sat in Harshal and Lorenzo’s living room and tried singing Tonttujen jouluyö in Finnish, regardless of nationality or level of language skills. The Tiptap tune was easy to join in on. When the group of friends celebrated New Year’s at Kansalaistori in Helsinki, the highlight of the evening was Bess’s Ram pam pam, with everyone singing along.

Harshal’s native language is Marathi and his working language is English, and he speaks a bit of Finnish. Lorenzo speaks English, and they both speak Hindi. Lorenzo’s Finnish is good enough to serve customers at the pet store in Finnish.

“Though my vocabulary is mostly about animals. I wouldn’t know how to talk about electricity or politics,” Lorenzo says.

Harshal immediately chimes in.

“Lorenzo is too self-critical! He just booked a car service in Finnish and manages the hardware store just fine.”

Their circle of friends keeps growing

Harshal and Lorenzo first bought a single-family house in Vantaa as their Finnish home. But they wanted more space for their rescue pets and their other animals, both indoors and outdoors.

Last year, a log house of over 250 m² (2,690 sq ft) on a horse farm in Mäntsälä went on the market. When they finalized the purchase, a plot was separated for them from the farm. Harshal, Lorenzo, and their menagerie finally got the space they needed—11 rooms.

They want to keep their doors as open here as they were used to in India, where 20 or 30 people would often gather on weekends. In Finland, friends are also warmly welcomed.

Their group of friends has grown quickly in Finland. Workplaces have helped them integrate. The barn owner, Tiina who sold them the house, still lives next door, and she and her grown children are now part of their inner circle. They’ve also gotten close to some of the people who care for the animals. Lorenzo, in particular, easily finds new friends through old ones, and Harshal’s friends quickly become mutual friends.

“We invite friends over nearly every weekend,” Harshal says.

They took their cue from their neighbors in India. Even parents of young children, despite working a lot, would invite people to a late-night cookout, say at ten in the evening. Harshal remembers thinking: If people who do organ transplants can make time for friends, so can we.

A bird out of its cage

“I love this country,” Lorenzo often says. It helped that in India he frequently felt like an outsider. His paternal grandparents were from Ireland and Britain. His mother was half Canadian and half Indian. Since his name wasn’t Indian and his appearance was distinct, Lorenzo felt he couldn’t get equal treatment.

In Finland, they’re glad that procedures follow regulations. Applying for a driver’s license involves the same paperwork for everyone. In India, formal bureaucracy is just a fraction of the process; the rest depends on the official, one’s own background, and simple luck.

That’s why Lorenzo was stressed about bringing their three dogs to Finland. In India the process was complicated, but in Finland it only took a couple of minutes to scan their microchips.

“I’ve never been so relieved! From that first moment, it made me love this country.”

In Mäntsälä’s surroundings, Lorenzo feels he can finally breathe. A big part of it is that they can be themselves openly. It wasn’t easy for a gay couple in India. They’ve lived together for twelve years, but only in the last two did their friends and families learn of their relationship. Before that, they presented themselves as friends.

“Like a bird set free from its cage,” is how Lorenzo describes it.

Lorenzo has studied animal psychology, and in India he worked with animals that had been mistreated or saved from a death sentence. That was often frustrating, and funding could be tied to political interests. Things also changed quickly. When the state of Maharashtra introduced a ban on consuming beef in 2015, people abandoned so much cattle that more than a hundred cows, bulls, or bison might arrive at the rescue center in a single day.

Still, Lorenzo thought the animals needed him too much for him to leave India. But the case of Avni the tiger made him reconsider. For over two years, authorities tried to capture the tiger, which came too close to inhabited areas. By law, it should have been tranquilized and relocated, but someone shot it first, Lorenzo says tearfully. After that, he was ready to move. A week later, Harshal got a job offer from Rovio in Finland.

It wasn’t the first time Lorenzo felt despair. In his twenties, he became depressed after dedicating himself to an animal rescue center that turned out to be laundering oil money.

A horse that had been discharged from the army due to a leg injury became his lifeline. Lorenzo named it Reason, believing everything happens for a reason. That horse made him want to keep working with animals.

“I owe my life to animals,” he says.

Housekeeping without domestic help

In India, having domestic help to handle cooking, cleaning, animal care, gardening, and even washing the car is common. It was like that in both Harshal’s and Lorenzo’s families. In Finland, however, they had to learn to manage these tasks themselves.

“We had no idea how to cook. It would simply appear on the table, and afterwards someone else cleared the dishes,” Harshal says.

They started practicing dishes they’d eaten in India, such as chicken biryani or lentil recipes. Relatives sent instructions, and Indian shops in Finland provided plenty of spices. Lorenzo never imagined he would actually enjoy cooking.

“It still feels unbelievable that we can cook. It hasn’t made our life harder; it has brought us joy,” Lorenzo reflects.

“Doing things yourself makes you more present in the moment,” Harshal muses.

On weekends the couple cooks Indian food for their friends, but on weekdays they follow a tight routine. They work out five times a week and keep a specific meal plan: at each meal, they both eat 50 g of rice, 150 g of chicken, and 250 g of vegetables (2 oz, 5 oz, and 9 oz, respectively).

“The rice goes in the rice cooker, the chicken in the grill, and we warm the veggies in a pan,” Harshal says with a laugh.

Lorenzo has also come to enjoy cleaning the house.

“You develop a real connection to the place. Cleaning makes me feel like I’m connected to my home in a completely new way.”