Home of my childhood

In those days, the houses in Malanad region of Karnataka were quite large. Let me describe my father's ancestral home.

    When you enter inside the compound wall, there will be a quite large courtyard. This courtyard will have 8-10 pillars normally logs of arecanut tree. In summer, pillars will be used to create an atta, a kind of temporary roof from sliced areca logs. Atta is used to dry the arecanuts.
  So from courtyard, you climb some steps to enter into the roofed veranda. It is called hebbagilu ( large door in Kannada). It will be open. If not, there will be wooden planks and grills. So hebbagilu will be always well lit and airy. It will have some benches. We call them sarakurchi.
   From Hebbagilu, you go inside the house to enter into jaguli. which is the hall. Jagauli will be main sitting area, with mats and cushions for men of the house and guests to sit and play cards. in the evenings. We children could never imagine sitting with elders in those days. The door leading from Jaguli to inside the house will be called pradhana bagilu (pradhana - major). This is auspicious door with elabarate carvings on it. The newly wed bride would enter through this door. On some festivals, this door is prayed to. And the door will be quite low. One should bend before entering into this door. There will be many photos of different gods on the wall above this door. I remember one of Shankaracharya.
    Next you enter into a dark and narrow passage - called malige. It will be completely dark and used to be good hiding place for us. Next you enter the puja room - room where gods are kept and prayed to. Unlike the puja room in Bangalore, these would be quite large enough, large enough for around 20 people to stand during pujas like Ganesh puja. In one corner of the room will be the actual devara pitha, The wooden stand for the gods. Inside this pitha, the idols will be kept.  Puja in an ordinary day is also an elaborate process, remove all the gods from pitha and place them on a special plate, wash each one of them. Put them back. Decorate them with sandal wood paste and flower then do arathi. I remember my mom telling me a story. Her cousin used to bribe his younger brother saying that if he does puja today, he will get 1 anna (1 anna was 6 paisa ) . The poor kid used to do puja and forget that anna next to god. He did not realize that he is getting his own money the next day also.

    From puja room you enter into kitchen cum Dining hall.  If you think of dining hall which can house a table with 6 chairs, you are wrong. Normal, ootada ola can accommodate 30 people at least. Instead of chairs, very low stools called mane are used to sit. And banana leaves are used instead of plates. Now there are not many banana plants.
    Next to this will be hitla kada, (hitlu - kitchen garden). This will be an area surrounding the bath room. It will have the well, then some more extra stoves to be used on special occasions. Then there is bachchalu which is the bath room. Bath room will have a copper pot which can hold almost 50-60 litres of water which will be placed on stove. The hot water will be there through out the day and the wood for this stove are kept outside the house in an area called kattige mane.
    Did I not tell you about mettu, i.e. first floor. There will be jaguli methu again another hall above jaguli with chairs and mats and cushions. There will be ori methu. Women and children will sleep in ori methu and men will sleep on jaguli methu. And then there is second floor called melina methu which will store sacks of dried areca nuts to be sold.


     P.S. : Sorry for the bad drawing. I am supposed to have studied Engineering drawing in first year.