Traditional Kitchen Style

Posting today, a  feature about traditional kitchens from around India appeared in the  Sep 23 , 20113 issue of India Today Home.

  

At the heart of every Indian house lies its kitchen. Although the traditional Indian hearth is a far cry from the gleaming counter tops of its city counterpart, it is not hard to find homes that still retain their age-old sanctums, with due modifications that occur over time.

The traditional kitchen evokes strong images – that of basic, utilitarian spaces, wood fired stoves and ovens, gleaming brass or stainless steel storage boxes, ceramic containers used to store pickles and preserves, charred patina of thick terracotta, meticulously scrubbed brass and steel pots.

Depending on the region the kitchen, there is also the odd implement and tool used for specific purposes of steaming, molding, grating and cutting etc.

Even as one routinely chances upon quirky coconut graters from down south and brass moulds to set kulfi in from the north in flea markets of Mumbai or Delhi, and ubiquitous gas cylinders and shiny stoves come to replace the traditional chullha, one questions the need to reminisce and observe age old practices. Is it an exercise merely driven by nostalgia? Or is there more to the traditional kitchen, the recipes it gives birth to and the traditions it represents?

 A close look into the mores that thrive in the Indian kitchen tells how this humble space is a receptacle of culture and a way of life that shapes an entire civilization.

The smell of wood smoke is enough to trigger journeys back into time and into spaces that one way or the other form a strong part of childhood memories for many. May be from a long lost a home back in a village, or that of an odd relative or friend that one visited or that of a grandparent.

 Usually when one thinks back to a home from the past, it is not surprising that most stories and associations one has are from long lost kitchens.  This more than any other part of the home brims with sights sounds and smells of all kind. However prosaic the range of activities that surround such a space, it seems to feed a lifetime  of memories and imagination of entire civilisations.

A guests cup of Khante, or salt butter tea always brims on a visit to a Ladakhi home

Where the modern kitchen is best suited to meet the needs of increasingly convenience driven households, the traditional kitchen addresses more than just functionality.  It is a sacred space, treated as such, perpetuating tradition and lessons that speak of a way of life.

Probably why, owners of a Raibnder home in Goa refused to cut the coconut trees that came in the way of their home while it was being constructed. So, very creatively two robust coconut trees serve as a pillar around which the kitchen is constructed.  “Trees are sacred, we did not want to cut those on the plot while making room for the house,’’ I was told by the owners. Speaks volumes about the sensitivity to the natural environment. A lot of the practices that surround old kitchens are considered sacred almost mystical than the purely scientific or functional. Not surprisingly the sight is unlike anything that a urban household can ever conceive of as possible.

With time, much has changed in rural as well as semi-urban and urban kitchens across the country. The tradition of cooking on a newly raised platform in a Rajashtani Haveli situated in the old quarter of Jaipur for example.  ``We used to have a large kitchen where the cooking was done on a hand made chullha’’, explains Aarti Devi, the matriarch of the family. However since the fragmentation of the joint family, the kitchen was reorganized into a much smaller corner she said. Their new kitchen- less than five years old- is more efficient in meeting the needs of their smaller household, yet retaining the essential character of the traditional haveli it finds a place of pride within.

For most part though kitchens like homes everywhere in traditional societies straddle the past and present comfortably, evolving with time, and retaining what remains functional and relevant from the past.   Thick Tibetan carpets cover the wooden floor of a traditional Ladhaki kitchen in Hunder in the Nubra Valley.  `` We still use traditional implements handed down to us by our parents since they suit our needs so well ‘’ says home-owner Tashi Dorjey, speaking off the `Lungto’ a traditional Stone urn that is used to cook rice in. The dense walls of the vessel keeps its contents warm for a long time even in below freezing conditions.

Perhaps revisiting a traditional kitchen is just more than an exercise in nostalgia then.  For this space with its symbols and rituals, above all spaces in the domestic domain not only upholds a way of life but also shapes the mind and body of entire civilizations. 

A peek into kitchen's around Goa.

Unfinished business

This one is an unlikely post. Design blogs are about perfection right? usually well manicured and curated beauty, order and elegance worthy of Pinterest ?   Only images I post today would  do  Pinterest fail proud.  (Check out this funny gem if you have not yet already :http://www.pinterestfail.com/)

Some times life is like that...

Things go on, go wrong. Do not adhere to our agendas.  Chaos is the dark side of order always.  The home too. A work in progress for months with the end no where in sight. Unforeseen emergencies,  strikes, material delays and the like.
Then there are the inevitable mistakes, miscalculations and disagreements.. Whatever the reasons, the the dust and cacophony is not going to settle anytime soon.  One has to some how settle for  the unfinished home. Somehow make peace with the constant hub -hub of people, workers, contractors, material and more.
Learning to breathe with it all this much I have learnt-  A home will never be home if you don't learn to live with it. The perfect, the imperfect. All.

Yogic breathing would help calm frayed nerves if it weren't so darn dusty all the time !   But there is always something one can do to make things better.  Waking up early to enjoy quite mornings for one. Realising that life changes but does not stop, so live as usual.  Flowers, lights, friends.. learning not to wait for a future date but live in the moment. As for the dust and the noise, there are always colourful dust covers and an effective pairs of ear plugs ;)

:)

The realm of the sacred.

In India faith is all pervading. The realm of the sacred does not restrict itself to places of worship. Spilling out on to streets, pavements, busy bazaars, places where business is transacted and the inner most sanctums of homes. Even the most modern city homes usually have a space designated to prayer and contemplation.
The Indian universe is replete with sacred gestures - mango leaf torans, rangolis, wall art, yantras and a lot more.
If habitats are indeed a reflection of the beliefs and aspirations central to our lives; Indian homes have an incredibly rich reservoir of images to draw from. A fact that cuts across myriad faiths and economic strata.  Symbols and images abound every where, in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist Islamic and Jain homes.
The religious image finds expression in various contexts:  in the form of the Christian cross and kitschy nativity toys or Hindu deities and idols revered in domestic puja altars. In the form of psychedelic pop art smiling down  from frames in shops or living rooms across the country.
Although inherently part of an elaborate ornate order, the ritualistic paraphernalia should not be viewed as having superficial significance only. Their importance almost always exceeds their decorative value.
At Sara Fernandez's home in Chandor, Goa, the family altar  finds a  prominent place in the living room. Among the various accouterments  of rituals and idols etc, stands a tiny statue of  Our Lady Bon Parte or the deity of safe delivery wrapped in rich navy blue velvet. The statue, known to bless an expecting mother and her child has been revered by the family for generations. Very often the statue is loaned to families in the village where a child is expected. Thus a private possession of one family provides moral support  and courage to an entire community. Interestingly when a baby was expected at a local Hindu politician's home, the statue  was requested from the Fernandez home to bless the delivery!

The mythic similarly is very important to the Ladhaki scheme of things. In a Ladhaki home, efforts to synthesize the material and metaphysical worlds are made at every step.
The roof is considered to be the purest area of the house, as such the four corners of the space  are marked by willow branches and prayer flags strung all around them.  A typical day starts with an offering of flowers and fruits at the domestic altar to appease the Gods, residents of the nether worlds and the ancestors alike.
So to in the Hindu home, the adoration and ritualistic celebration of the divine is the way to start and end a day.  Irrespective of the economic status of the family, a tiny altar or elaborate puja rooms are created for the purpose.   The entrance to the Hindu homes is blessed by idols of Ganesha and elaborate or crude religious symbols and decorations. During annual celebration of Ganpati and navratri ritualistic prayers often revolving around a particular deity are organized.
Many old colonial homes in Goa and coastal Maharashtra have Gothic altars resplendent with gold and enamel details and contain a fantastic host of Catholic artifacts.
In most Indian homes, the realm of the  divine is the space that draws the family together -whether for simple prayer uttered at the start of the day, or an elaborate festival. It is also a reflection of the passions that motivates the family and a fountainhead of the value systems that guide it.

Our Lady Bon Parte or safe delivery at Sara Fernandez's home in Goa.

Street level workshop by day, and home at night for a migrant metal worker.

Old haveli in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Family mandir, a small altar in another part of the same house, and an old Raja Ravi Verma print hanging in the living room of an old Goa home.

A pot of tulsi finds it place wherever space is available in Hindu homes of Worli koliwada, Mumbai

The way we live : A house by the sea

Society  has produced  the housing it needs, naturally and indigenously... this is not habitat that an outsider has to come in and `design'; rather it is the end product of a process that is organic to society, like flowers that bloom in a meadow

~ Charles Correa 

The homes built in the vernacular of  coastal Maharashtra are hardly for iconic or grandiose architecture. Yet driving past any residential cluster, it is hard to resist their trademark bright colors and individual quirks.

On a muggy monsoon morning, plying the back roads of a sleepy hamlet a few hundred kilometers outside Mumbai, I keep noticing the cottage style houses with simple mud and brick exteriors and thatched roofs. Until a bright crimson door  into a equally vibrant blue coloured squat adobe construction completely stops me in my tracks.

Walking into other peoples homes unannounced, just like that is never without a risk of rejection and embarrassment. This time as in the past, I just go ahead and take that chance anyway..

Inside, an elderly lady has just sit down to her lunch on a simple yet sturdy jhoola swinging from the roof.  I could not have chosen a worse hour to walk in, unannounced.

Luckily for me, home owner- Sailesh Kamath, does not seem to mind. Mr Kamath owns a sweet shop around the corner in Revdanda. He lives in the house with his aged mother and younger brother. Without much ado I am  invited  into his family home with the same warm hospitality I have experienced in countless homes in the region.

The structure,  bright and beautiful on the outside is astounding from the inside. Almost 150 years old I am told!   Its adobe and brick walls painted a vivid sea green are  sturdy and unscathed by time. Various generations have used the houses says Mr Kamat. Not so long ago,  an extended family of 17 would live in that space until demands of livelyhoods and education scattered them within the region and other parts of the country, he adds.

The old matriarch of the house- the gentleman's mother- quietly follows me on my explorations through the interiors. Offering, little nuggets  of information about the space and the family.  The decor, mostly functional and very simple has changed over  the years she says. Her younger son's political leanings and love for 1950's bollywood reflects in bright coloured bazar prints framed and hung as display in the  central foyer and elsewhere in the  house.

The fact that the house goes back years and  has changed hands many times during its history is evident in the way the orientation of the different living spaces is completely mixed up.  What used to be the main door is now permanently barred, and one of the original side entrances  is used for the purpose instead. A  separate cooking area and aangan has been turned into outhouse, segregated from the main structure. I try to take  in as much about the house and its people in the brief time I have inside the little blue house.

A jhoola encountered earlier,  in the kitchen also serves as an informal seating at meal times along with various coloured chowkis stacked neatly against the house.  All rooms have built in shelves and niches in the walls which serve both functional and decorative purposes.

The flooring of the house is made of hard baked clay to which   a coating  of dung fine straw and earth is applied  with the hands once a week. Although tiles would be far more convenient,  (which is why dung floors are vanishing fast across homes such as this every where) the owners say they prefer the old floor to cheap ceramic tiles.

Having taken a lot of the family's time, I take their  leave with a promise of stopping by when I am in these parts next.

  Getting back to the quote by Charles Correa I started the post with - One  thinks about  Mumbai and its built environment. Not so long ago, there was much to choose for the migrant into the city, bungalows, waadis , chawls even village style living . The city's  settlements dating back to the colonial times -( Khotachiwadi) or even  most of Bandra's quaint fishing villages boast structures built in various permutations available within the  Konkan coastal vernacular  mixed with  Portuguese and east Indian styles of housebuilding.  

Unfortunately for us city dwellers, residential architecture is being increasingly governed by singular ideologies of  development that generate high rise vertical housing as Mumbai's colonial diversity and heritage housing festers.

Workshop at Anokhi museum

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

American poet novelist and social activist Marge Piercy says so  while writer philosopher and Robert M Pirsig  dedicates  a whole book to it. The virtue of using your hands. A case for respecting physical labour  has been made again again in the context of hyper mechanised time such as ours.
Deeper psychological motivations for creating  and submitting ones senses to materials and manual processes aside, I am always one for using my hands. Provided  it is not too complex, there is plenty of help at hand and nobody is judging the misadventures that usually result in trying some thing entirely new!
Motorcycle maintenance unfortunately does not qualify for me then.  But with a little help from the experts,  block printing my  own piece of fabric should not be as hard? I had pre booked an appointment at the Anokhi Museum workshop days in advance. Imagine being able to engage with materials and processes of an age old craft in the sunlit environs of a 14th century Rajasthani haveli?. Quite naturally I was excited !

Only when  in that sun dappled heaven two and a half meters of cotton mul fabric was stretched neatly onto a padded work table ahead of me did it strike. A familiar fear of blank white space ! It was going to be a long day of  effort and learning an entirely new thing.
Luckily for me, the  workshop has an unsmiling, but extremely competent and helpful master printer ready to assist  me through the afternoon's work.

Muhammed Iqbal, the no-nonsense lord of the workshop calmly drew a tray of blocks  and laid them on the table. '' You can choose a simple one or two-block pattern or make something  more intricate with more colours," he suggested.   

Having waited to try my hand at block printing  for this long, I was under tremendous pressure to create a masterwork instantly. So  no  one colour and two block set for me as I reached for a full four block pattern.  (Although I  really wanted to  see  some of my favourite Anokhi blocks,  the  Poppy flower or Imperial peony designs, none of the two were available at that time)  Rummaging through  the pile, a little too assiduously in the hope of getting my nerves together, I  arrived at a lotus Jaal pattern finally.

Iqbal, a skilled craftsman who has been in the trade since he was  a tiny 8-years-old,  walked me through the preliminaries,  cutting down all drama instantly: what to print? How many blocks and how many colours?
Prep in place, began the arduous but utterly engrossing actual printing process.





The number of printing blocks needed in a design often depends  on the number of colours desired.   To begin with the  background of the  fabric is printed onto the fabric with the help of the   Gudh  or the background block. I chose a dull  moss green colour for the same.  The  block needs to be  dabbed on the dye tray in one deft motion,  so that the right amount of pigment adheres to the pattern.  The printer then aligns it on the fabric and discharges the dye from the block with a sharp tap on  the back of the block. Care needs to be taken to match the design of the  first block so that the design falls into place for the entire length . If this sounds simple, I must add it took me a good amount  of concentration and effort to get it just about right.




Soon the workshop  filled up  with the sweet thump thump of blocks hitting the padded table. A kind of musical,  set of thumps  that transport one instantly into an absorbed, focused state. An hour into the deal - right upto the time a cup of tea materialised like a miracle, I had all but  lost myself to  the rhythmic, repetitive motions. The deep state of peace achieved actually had very little bearing on the number of mistakes I was inadvertently yet continuously making! Mercifully  Iqbal generously and deftly kept correcting after me all the time making light of my mounting sense of inadequacy . " Wait till we finish," he kept saying and I very wisely decided to take his advice.
Once the Gudh is successfully executed, the Rekh or the outline block needs to be applied. This stage  gives definition to the design and requires a lot of precision.   I watched the demo attentively. But no amount of attention can make up for the lack of experience.  In spite of my valiant efforts I continued to  go horribly off the mark in a number of places.

Barely half way through my arms throbbing with the effort and  outlines already a mess, I felt a   tremendous respect for the people who actually do this for a living. For the commercial patterns can demand way more than just four blocks. Iqbal told me of something he had printed with ten blocks!  Only before I could start ruing the decision to undertake just the four block design, he promised that the next two blocks were not going to be all that hard.  And he was right!
The remaining two blocks  Called Datta, are  essentially those that fill in colour in the outlined design. I choose bright blue and red pigments.  The design begins to emerge with each colour applied.  The final, red coloured lotus petal blocks being the crowning glory of all exertions of the day !




The day done, I chose to feel exhilarated in spite of the tiredness. The plain white fabric had been transformed  with colour and pattern. As for the imperfections and mess, I decided to love them all; after all if  there is going to be just this afternoon of printing and just these two meters of cotton mul I will take back home.  Until another such afternoon and another length of fabric that is!

Note : 
Rajasthan has been an important centre of hand printing since the 12 century.  Where at the workshop we get to work with carved wooden blocks, numerous techniques of hand printing and dyeing have been popular  in areas in and around Jaipur. Traditionally  the block prints of Jaipur  and its surrounding  villages were known not just for their quality  of printing but also for their use of natural dyes. The advent of commercial screen printing in the early  1960's bought with it new chemical colouration processes', which block printers were  fast to adapt  to their own printing styles. 
It is also possible to participate in a block carving workshop  at the museum by appointment.
For details about the workshop, timings, booking etc visit the museum website here :  Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing.