The House On Pillars

In the 1970s, after having lived as caretaker tenants for a few months in the quiet and unspoilt seaside neighborhood of Thiruvanmiyur, my wife and I made up our minds to put down our roots there. In those days Thiruvanmiyur was a suburb of Madras (as Chennai was then known) and most people thought that we were very daring and unwise to live in such a "remote" place. Although there were very few proper houses around, and an enormous amount of vacant land, it took us almost a year to find somebody willing to sell us a small plot. Land was not expensive then. In fact we paid only around US$ 350 for our plot. But the cost of construction was relatively high.

Although money, or more precisely our lack of it, was an important factor, there were a few other bigger hurdles. There were a number of permits and service connections to be obtained and, even in those relatively less corrupt days, it was a severe ordeal to deal with a very large number of minor and major bureaucrats. To add to our problems, those were the days of cement and steel shortages. In fact the cement scarcity was so severe that its supply was controlled by the Indian Government and rationed to consumers. And this of course brought a whole new set of bureaucrats into play. The shortage of materials and the consequent delays in the delivery of the materials made it very difficult to keep to construction schedules and stay within budgets.

Since steel and cement were the two major "problem" materials we decided to minimise their use in the house construction. We went in for a variety of roofing techniques, such as sloped clay tiled roofing, and hollow clay tile roofing, left our walls unplastered on one side, and went in for clay tile flooring. In addition to this we also decided to use pivot hinges for our doors and do away with door frames, had smaller but strategically placed windows, and reduced the floor to ceiling height, all in a bid to reduce costs. As a result we were able to keep to both the construction schedule and our budget. It also allowed us the luxury of building the entire house on stilts.

Since there were very few built houses around, our house was now visible from quite some distance in every direction. And unlike other houses which rested solidly on the ground the first level of our house was left entirely vacant. As a result our house came to be known in the neighbourhood as the "thoon veedu" or " house on pillars".

Some years later, when we had a few more neighbours, Chennai experienced particularly severe flooding, and the locality where we lived was also flooded. Although we had water in our plot, under the house, and all around us, we were unaffected by it. A number of people thought that we had been very wise to have anticipated this event and planned for it. Actually it had never occurred to us that the area could be flooded since that had never happened within living memory. We had built our house on stilts because it was located a little further away from the sea than what we would have liked, and we wanted to ensure that we had a good view of the water.

Thiruvanmiyur Beach

When we first moved into this part of Chennai we lived in a newly built house right on the seashore, as caretakers for the owners who were living abroad. We had one elderly lady living next door, and a locked up empty house on the other side as our immediate neighbors. There was also a fishing village nearby and much of their daily activity took place on the beach right in front of our home.

The access roads to this area of the city were not well developed, and the entire area used to be desolate at night. Many of my friends and relatives thought that we were mad to leave "civilization" so far behind, but my wife and I loved living here.

Originally the house owners were supposed to come back to India only several years later, but suddenly their plans changed and we had to vacate the house for them. It was then that we decided to build our own home in the same area. We were sort of pushed into taking the plunge a little earlier than we otherwise might have, but in the end it proved to be a good thing for us. Land prices and construction costs suddenly soared, but only after we had bought our land and built our house.

Today, over thirty years later, this part of the city is very much sought after as one of the nicer communities to live in. The high cost of land has resulted in most of the housing being in the form of apartment buildings. As a result, although the beach is relatively unspoiled, it is very crowded in the evenings.

Another big change that I notice is in the type of fishing vessels. In the 1970s the local fishermen went out to sea in catamarans. The word catamaran comes from the Tamil "kattu maram" which means tied wood. The fishermen used to go out to sea on raft-like boats made by tying a bunch of logs together. You can see what these catamarans used to look like in my sketch painting. But now, most fishermen use fiberglass boats, and quite a few of them even use mechanized boats.

The fishing village has grown and therefore there are more boats beached up on the sand these days. And Chennai being a very hot and humid place the beach is an extremely popular open space for the entire community.

Unfortunately this beach is now threatened by an unwanted development. There is a proposal to run an elevated roadway for many kilometers over this beach. The objective is to cut the driving time for people going from the city to the southern suburbs of the city and to a tourist destination to the south of Chennai. The fishing communities, the residents of many of the affected neighborhoods, and environmentalists have all protested but is so far unclear whether these protests will even be heard.

Breaking the silence

Every New Year I make a few resolutions. I write them down on a piece of paper and at the end of the year I check to see how many of them I have actually managed to keep. At the end of 2009, amongst other things I resolved to post to my blog more frequently than I had done in 2009. Although, when I checked at the end of 2010, my success rate with the rest of my resolutions was reasonably high, this was one resolution where I had failed miserably. I had managed to post only twice during the entire year.

Meanwhile my wife, daughter, and a few friends who had been following my posts had all been at me every now and then asking me why I had stopped posting stuff. The point was that through my blog I wish to share not only my thoughts, opinions, information & trivia, but also at least one of my sketches with every post. And unfortunately, during the first half of 2010, as it happens to me during the first half of every calendar year, I had not found the time to do much sketching. By the time I was back at my hobby, it had already been many months since I had posted anything, and inertia had set in.

Re-activating my blog and posting regularly were therefore on my list of resolutions once again, this time for 2011. But again, a third of the year 2011 went by before I have finally got down to it. Hopefully I will be able to sustain it this time.

During my extended period of blogging inactivity my daughter tried to nudge me back on track with a Brahma Book which is the Indian version of a moleskin sketchbook. I started using it promptly and I carry it faithfully with me every single day. The sketch that I am sharing is one of the first that I did in this book. It shows my home, located in a quiet seaside community in Chennai. Unfortunately there is a distinct possibility that it may not remain calm and quiet very much longer. More of that in a subsequent post.

St. Mary's Church, Fort St. George, Chennai

I spent the first 17 years of my life on the West coast of India. It must be quite obvious from a dozen or so of my posts so far, that I have an extremely soft corner for Kerala and most things associated with it. However, I have lived a much larger portion of my life on the East coast of India, in Chennai the capital city of the state of Tamilnadu. I moved here in my late teens to pursue my studies, and I have stayed on ever since. In those days it was called Madras, and it was only in 1996 that the State Government changed its name to Chennai.

The Chennai (or Madras) of my student days was a much nicer city. There were fewer people, and more importantly there were far fewer vehicles on the streets. There were fewer buildings too, very much more open land around these buildings, and life was much slower paced. Having a vehicle made it very convenient to get around, but it did not need to be a car. Even a cycle would do, and that is what I had. The Chennai of those days was also quite pedestrian friendly.

But, in the last few decades Chennai has grown at a brisk pace and in my opinion, it has not grown sensibly. A large number of modern buildings have come up, some of them at the expense of much nicer old buildings. The number of residents as well as vehicles has gone up very steeply. The roads are choked, traffic moves very slowly and chaotically, and the effective width of carriageways is considerably reduced because vehicles are parked along the sides of almost all roads. In the process, Chennai has become an extremely pedestrian unfriendly city. Yet, there is no plan in place to arrest this trend. Instead, the authorities are considering spending huge sums of money to insert more roads to serve an even larger number of vehicles. They also admit, quite unashamedly that, while doing this, they may be further narrowing down the almost non-existent pavements (sidewalks).

However, on the plus side, Chennai has always been known as a very strong cultural centre and it continues to hold this position. It was, until recently, notorious for its giant movie, political, and advertisement hoardings. These were a painful eyesore. But a recent court judgement brought relief and they have all come down. In the immediate aftermath, the city seemed to emerge afresh and it took all of us a while to get our bearings again as old landmarks once again became visible. There are also signs of a new concern for the preservation of buildings of heritage value, and the creation of parks and open spaces for the public.

Strangely, I have drawn hardly any of the buildings or scenes around Chennai, and this is something that I propose to rectify. I suppose that this is largely due to the fact that I have a lot more time to sketch when I am travelling on holiday. I do have one small ink and watercolour of the St. Mary's Church, in Fort St. George, Chennai to share with you. This church was consecrated in 1680, and is the oldest building built by the British in India. At the time of its construction , it was considered bomb-proof because of the way it was built with a foundation capable of absorbing the effects of shelling, four feet thick walls, and a double vaulted, four feet thick, rounded roof capable of withstanding "bombing" with cannon-balls.

There is also a lot of history associated with this building. The marriages of Robert Clive, who was one of the founders of the British Empire in India, and of Elihu Yale, who was associated with the founding of Yale University in USA, were both performed in this church. The records of the church from 1680 to 1819 (and perhaps even more recent records, by now) have been digitized and are used by foreign visitors to check on their ancestry.

You will find more information about this church here.

Fort Kochi Beach Front

One of the very nice things about Fort Kochi is the fact that it is very pedestrian friendly. That is not true of either the city where I live, Chennai...or Ernakulam which is just across the backwaters from Fort Kochi and Mattancherry. During the couple of days that we spent at Fort Kochi we must have walked around fifteen km or so admiring the well preserved old structures, the lush greenery, and the waterfront.

On one of these walks along the waterfront I came across some rain shelters and picnic facilities facing the sea. They were built under a canopy of trees. I found some of the tree trunks very interesting and they are the primary subject of my sketch. The fact that the spot was in the shade, with plenty of convenient seats, and with cool breeze coming off the Arabian Sea made sketching this on location a very pleasant experience.

I spent about an hour on this -- 45 minutes or so at the spot, and around 15 minutes more in the hotel room. While I was drawing I had a few passers by stopping, looking at my drawing, commenting, and engaging me in conversation. Although it slowed me down I rather enjoyed the experience.

The garden

The entry to our room at the Old Harbour Hotel, at Fort Kochi was through a nice courtyard. The room also opened out on to a lovely garden. What was even nicer, from my point of view, was the fact that one of the windows in the room overlooked this garden, and that there was a writing table placed right up against this window.

It is not often that I get a chance to do a location sketch sitting in the comfort of an air-conditioned room, and I did not let this one pass.

We spent the better part of two days at Fort Kochi using the hotel as our base and exploring on foot both Mattanchery and Fort Kochi. Every time we got back to the hotel my wife would put up her feet for a while, and I would rush to the writing table and add a few more lines to my sketch.

Though done in fits and starts, I was happy that I managed to complete it before checking out of the hotel.

Paradesi Synagogue

One of the nice things about Kerala is its long history of religious harmony. Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, as well as people of other faiths have lived together, and continue to do so, as very friendly neighbours.

The earliest synagogue built in Kochi was destroyed around 1500, not by the locals, but by the Portuguese. Subsequently in 1568 under the protection of the Hindu king Raja Ravi Varma, and the Dutch, a new synagogue was built on land gifted to the jewish community by him. This piece of land was right next to the king's Mattanchery Palace. In fact, the synagogue and the Hindu temple attached to the palace share a compound wall.

This synagoue is known by several names. It is called the Paradesi Synagogue, the Cochin Jewish Synagogue, and also as the Mattanchery Synagogue (Mattanchery being the name of a part of Kochi (or Cochin as it was called during the colonial rule of India).

The word "Paradesi" means foreigner in several Indian languages. It was therefore used in the early days to describe this particular synagogue because it was originally used only by the "white" jews. The synagogue is still in use and is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Jewish holidays.

The synagogue complex consists of 4 structures. My sketch shows the clock tower, which was built in 1760. The synagogue proper is a structure to the left and is barely seen in my sketch. In any case, I have found that most people visualise the clock tower when they try to recall the synagogue.