The young Indians saving crumbling ancestral homes
When Rohan Dewanjea was a little boy, he and his cousins would spend summer afternoons at their family home marveling at the vivid light that filtered through the stained-glass-inlaid Venetian windows.
After his family sold the land to local builders, he watched as those windows and his childhood house, the huge, 120-year-old Jagat Niwas in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, were torn down this month.
It was a sensible choice; they just couldn’t maintain the three-story building any longer.
But Mr. Dewanjea and a group of artists paid homage to the historic home before to its demolition by hosting a public, two-day participatory art event inside the structure.
The event, appropriately dubbed Museum of Air and Dust, was organized by performance artist Uma Banerjee, 32, whose mission was to “let people experience this wonderful mansion and the memories linked with it.”
In addition, we wished to make a joyful new memory of the house before it was lost forever.
It’s not just them. To prevent them from being destroyed and forgotten in society, young Indians are working to bring attention to centuries-old dwellings.
On Instagram, where families share fascinating anecdotes about the homes they have lived in and occasionally even discuss ways to raise money through crowdsourcing, they are taking pictures of the structures.
These ancestral dwellings can be found all over India in their hundreds. Families see them as a treasure trove of memories as well as a representation of social and economic power. According to Mumbai-based conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah, they also have historical value.
The stately homes in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the former capital of British-ruled India, are renowned for fusing Indian and European architectural styles. Many antique homes in Goa serve as a reminder of the state’s ties to the Portuguese, who held it as a colony for more than 400 years.
Unfortunately, a lot of these houses are in ruins or are about to be sold or destroyed
According to Ms. Lambah, “India offers virtually little support for privately-owned heritage sites,” noting that it is difficult to preserve and renovate these homes. Many of the traditional building methods and materials used to construct the dwellings, like Burmese teakwood and encaustic tiles, are now expensive and difficult to find.
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These houses “provide a glimpse into our shared past and showcase the architectural styles of the times they were built in,” the author claims.
Another issue is that it is tougher for those left, frequently the older generation, to take care of the house as nuclear families have become the norm and individuals are moving away for employment.
Rajkumar Vasudevan, 54, who owns a 600-year-old family home in Kerala state, is having this issue. It was formerly home to a rowdy joint family, but now it’s just him and his mother.
The home has a north, south, east, and west block with an open courtyard in the traditional Nalukettu architectural style of Kerala. Mr. Vasudevan claims he is fighting decay and termite assaults on the wooden house.
He discovered Dharinni, a Kerala-based trust for ecological and heritage conservation run by three architects, during his hunt for assistance.
The stately homes in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the former capital of British-ruled India, are renowned for fusing Indian and European architectural styles. Many antique homes in Goa serve as a reminder of the state’s ties to the Portuguese, who held it as a colony for more than 400 years.
Unfortunately, a lot of these houses are in ruins or are about to be sold or destroyed.
According to Ms. Lambah, “India offers virtually little support for privately-owned heritage sites,” noting that it is difficult to preserve and renovate these homes. Many of the traditional building methods and materials used to construct the dwellings, like Burmese teakwood and encaustic tiles, are now expensive and difficult to find.
One of these is the Fernandes mansion, which dates back more than 600 years. Their group’s Chandor historic route includes it. The Kadamba dynasty, a Hindu royal family that ruled Goa from the 10th to the 14th century, once had Chandor as its capital.
The mansion was once a component of the Chandor fort’s fortifications, according to an archaeological assessment of the land.
