Girl About Home: October 2011

Colour and lots of hand made fun this diwali

Quick post about Diwali prep at home. This year, we have tried to reuse things we have at home, add more colour and have loads of fun in anticipation of the day!

The kids having a go at painting the diyas, which are soaked, washed and primed with offwhite paint first.

For many years now, I have refused to throw my used earthen diyas away. Just so long as they are not chipped and cracked, we wash dry and repaint them using bio-safe acrylics giving them a new lease of life.

This year, we are making story- stools to prop the Diyas on too. All manner of old chowkis and peedhas, have been sanded down and painted in vibrant colours. Some featuring motifs and scenes from my kids favourite traditional Indian stories.

Painted and finished..together with a bunch of yellow and orange foot stools to house them on.

The stools make bright little spots- ideal to brighten up the house for Diwali. These will get used in the house easily later, as tiny study desks, table top accents, to store books and ofcourse just normal stools to sit on.

Since they can be painted over easily, the activity allows for maximum fun..something my kids too have had a liberal hand in. Unabashedly playing with paint, leaving the finer details from me to tweak later ;).

The Bull from heaven.

The stool pictured above is based on a lively Buddhist story chosen by my son.

A word about the illustration: I have based the drawing in good part on a drawing by illustrator Linda Edwards, from a children's book called ~Stories from India~ published by Usborne.

Hope to comeback with yet another Diwali post, provided I can make the time to tend to the blog while so much is going on around.

Have a good one folks !

An article appeared in the discover India section of online design and style magazine Prismma.

Startling colours of an exterior wall and window from a Margao house.

Dream like, yet elemental, Goan homes preside over a lush green paradise. The warm and humid climate blurs the distinction between indoors and the outdoors. Shaping in response to the fecund tropical conditions and long years of colonial rule, Goan domestic architecture is enriched by the European experience, yet rooted deeply in the local culture.

Ranging from simple mud houses, to grand mansions displaying an agglomeration of Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic influences, Goan homes are a palimpsest of architectural styles and influences.

In home after home, one will encounter delightfully syncretic architecture and elaborate interiors that blend pre-existing Hindu and Maratha motifs with European styles introduced by the colonizing Portuguese in the 16^th Century.

The broad elements of Goan houses result form a mixture of Indian and Portuguese styles. Homes that are Portuguese in origin are usually two-storeyed and façade oriented. Whereas those of Indian origin are single-storeyed with a traditional courtyard based orientation.

Between the two also, there is wonderful mixing and marrying of ideas, resulting in nuanced, hybrid architecture that is both impressive and inspiring- for example the two-storeyed house in which the top story is functional while the ground floor is merely ornamental. It was Portuguese custom to segregate the lower storey of the house for the household staff and retainers. Since in the Hindu home the servant quarters were typically located at the back of the house, this bottom storey became shorter, until it reduced to an ornamental high-platform in time, adorned with decorative arches, pilasters and colonettes.

For a better understanding of the Goan eclectic idiom of house building one may firstly, look at ways in which the local population adopted styles and precedents set by the Portuguese. And secondly, the ways in which the local identity asserted itself in shaping and adapting the influences passed on by the colonial masters.

As they grew in power and rank within the Portuguese administration, the upper class Goan aristocrats sought to emulate and even surpass the grandeur of the residences of their Portuguese counterparts: The examples of this trend are many- The practice of building grand staircases in the entrance halls, many windowed facades- like at the Braganza home in Chandor- busts of classical Renaissance figures in the pediments of façade windows, grand dance halls as a focal point of the home.

In an assertion of the local Goan identity, the erection of a columned porch with seats built into its two sides, called bollcaum, also became commonplace in the 19^th century. In time the bollcaum was extended to include the façade of the entire house effectively screening it from rain and the hottest midday sun. Where on the one hand the covered porch with built in seating confirmed to the Indian ideas of decorum, it did so by extending the house into the public space- adapting to ` open-minded’ western mores. It is an interesting vantage point to observe life go by the house, a feature used frequently by the lady of the house.

Other interesting and unique aspects of the houses one will encounter in the state are the use of locally available building material such as laterite stone in place of brick and lime plaster, which make for sturdy and durable structures. Additionally, in many homes, readily available mother-of-pearl is used to line window shutters.

The window shutters are particularly enchanting. The shiny iridescent patina of the shell lends luminosity to the spaces that glass shutters – used to replace shell increasingly- are not able to replicate.

Something has to be said about the bright colouring and unabashed love for pigment here. In the early days of Portuguese rule, only churches and other religious structures were permitted to use white to color their exteriors. The domestic residential structures automatically adopted bold and sensational colors subsequently achieved with the use of vegetable and natural dyes in the past.