The Ancestral House at North Eswaran Koil Street

Can houses be as memorable as people or events in one's memories? Certainly. For me, aaya's house at North Eswaran Koil Street is so much a part of my childhood that I must share my memories of it with all.

I've never been in such a large house ...it seemed to stretch for a mile deep inside. It was a long house, and the breadth of it was dwarfed by the length. 


The house was separated from the Eswaran Koil prahara wall by just a narrow road. There were four or five long steps framed by concrete elephants' heads with long trunks forming the little frame for the steps worn smooth by an endless number of little bottoms sliding on these trunks. Later, they were removed and ordinary concrete frames replaced them. Not as much fun as the elphants' heads though. 


If one sat on the steps, one could see the Siva Bootha guarding the North corner of the temple across the road. I always used to think that was a lion, till years later, I knew it to be a guardian of Lord Shiva.

One climbed the steps to get into a large cool hall with a wooden staircase winding upstairs and a huge wall to ceiling glass shelf. There were two pomeranian dolls with beady eyes, silky coats and a smile on their faces. I used to press my nose against the glass and be scolded by 'Bombai maama' as Chandra maama was fondly called by me. The shelves were filled with awards, trophies, cups and mementoes. There were also odd handicraft items, like small chairs and tables made of plastic wires. I guess one of the chithis made them.

A narrow passageway took us to a horizontally long hall set with huge wooden cupboards on the right. They used to store aaya's snowy white towels, her soft blouses, thick cotton sarees, medicine kits and thaatha's incredibly , brilliantly white vestis, vests and towels. The large pooja room flanked one side of it. There was always a fragrance wafting from that room. A large glass encased Iyyappan decprated with sequins and a huge garland of what looked to me like huge nellikai seeds...now I guess they were rudhrakshas. There were small framed pictures of gods and goddesses and my favourite was an incredibly beautiful Saraswathi who had a lovely smile on her face. Later, thaatha added a picture of Jesus as a shepherd, done in 3D, which is another favourite picture of mine.

On the other side was the store room of beds and mattresses stacked celing high, a cupboard or too. It used to be a dark dark room full of fears and ghosts in a little child's imagination. Later, thaatha made it into a bright office for the industry he was running. Then, it got filled up with awards, framed certificates and some crystal objects on the table. It then became forbidden territory for children.

Opposite that was another room which stored of all things, banana stems full of ripe, unripe fruits with the most wonderful smell of fruits, a smell as endearing today as it was then. It also had a small sewing machine, a cupboard to store sewing materials and a radio that used to play songs softly.

Next to the hall, was an L-shaped space with a granary on the right and a massive dining space with iron rafters on the ceiling, where sparrows chirped and nested freely. The best part of the dining hall was there was a floor to ceiling open wall with just iron bars, no windows letting in plenty of heat, sunlight and brezze. There was also a small space in the arm that had just enough space for a small, low stringed cot on which aaya used to sit and chop vegetables and sort out household chores.

In the dining hall was a meshed cupboard with pickle jars, candies, bottles of spices etc.

The kitchen was a smooth walled huge space with a cooking space with a chimney stack large enough to have two people stand one beside the other comfortably. There were large storage shelves always filled with vessels. In one corner was a large sink, a kind of cornered space. Vessels were rarely washed there, so we used to use the space to hide in when no elders were around.

The courtyard was atleast as big as a tennis court, well, maybe, just a shade smaller. There was a raised platform at the end of it, which housed a king size motor rice grinder and a hand mortar as deep as a pond. The single wooden pillar had the rope operated butter churner.

The two bathrooms, one of which was adjacent to the meshed in well, had a water logged mirror, a Cinthol soap, a Lifebuoy soap and a sandalwood soap banned from being touched by small grubby hands. I never knew who used them in that large household. A mill sized water boiler always had water kept hot and fed with coal and wood from the wood stock room in the back yard. There were three taps set into a deep recess in the wall in which we could wash hands.

A thin wooden door opened from there into the backyard where one found a long cow yard and a massive cattle yard with a deep water hole and feeding tub at one end, another small room housing all the wood needed and two tall nathinyavattai trees overflowing with thousands of white delicate petalled flowers that thaatha always plucked in the mornings for atleast an hour to worship his gods and goddesses with.

The toilets were at first long raised concrete steps and were manually cleaned. They later gave way to more modern toilets. The last door opened into the backyards of several houses and was forbidden from being opened except when the scavenger came in.

Hundreds of memories flash in my mind as I write these lines. It was not just a house. It was home to so many of us, our lives and memories are inextricably linked to it. I had the best and the worst of times there...but good or bad, these memories are what I am today. Dhamayanthi household was one of pleasure, joy, sorrow, fun, festivals and moon light stories. More of that later.