Shimmering rain drops adorn a gnarled 70-plus jasmine creeper, queen of the lush greenery in Anand Nivas. In fact, some of the plants and trees surrounding the house are older than the residents. When a home is more than 90 years old, that is to be expected. “That jasmine was planted by Jayanthi, who, later, became Dr. Pai’s wife, while the rose jasmine on the right was planted by me when I came to live here in the fifties. I got it from my house in Thalassery,” says Suman Kamath who stays in Anand Nivas with her son Satish Kamath and his wife, Shyamala Kamath.
Situated on the road that connects Vazhuthacaud to Pangode and beyond, this one-storeyed tiled house built in the vernacular tradition seems to be basking in its memories. Back in time to a period when the 4,400 square feet house on 25 cents was surrounded by trees and quietude. When there were cows in the cow shed and children playing in the swing inside the house. “It is said to have been built by a wealthy Chettiar and then it used to be called Subramania Lodge. In the late thirties, my mother-in-law’s father, Justice Narayana Rao, lived here as a tenant. Later, when my father-in-law, N. Krishna Kamath, was planning to buy a house, his wife’s father suggested they buy this and that is how it came into our possession,” she recalls.
Be Aware of God is the sign board that greets present-day visitors to Anand Nivas. Open the gates and step into an old-world grace that envelopes the house with the wooden gables and roof. Sunlight pouring in through the wide windows and green window panes lights up the precious antiques that are so much a part of this living space. Be it a precious old photograph of Narayana Rao and his wife with one of his sons, the elegant, comfortable furniture or the ornate ‘nikah bed’ in the living room or the wooden deities of gods in the pooja room, each has a tale to narrate and bears the care of many generations of men and women who lived in the house.
High up on the carved gable, a wooden painted carving of Vishnu looks down upon the bustling road outside. The wooden ceiling in all the rooms have been painted during a recent maintenance and much of the original cement floor has been replaced with mosaic, wooden parquet and so on. Sepia–tinted portraits of good looking men and women adorn most of the rooms. Illustrations, sketches and caricatures bearing the famous signature of Abu Abraham occupy pride of place on the lime and plaster walls of the living room and the adjoining one.
But the showstopper in the boudoir-like room is an ornate, heavily–worked rosewood cot that was given to Krishna Kamath by one of his clients from Alappuzha. The overcast skies threaten to pour down into an inner courtyard that is open to nature. A wooden swing, which is even older than the house, invites passersby to lie down and watch the skies and the rain. “It was much wider and bigger than this but my mother-in-law told me that when we brought it down from Alappuzha, it would not fit into the house and so it had to be cut down to size,” says Suman as she sits down on the swing to explain the layout of the house.
The living rooms open into each other and run from the front door to the rear of the house while the bedrooms are on the sides of the common rooms. Wooden doors and window panes keep the harsh glare out while plenty of windows in each room let in light and air. “This house has been continuously occupied, so much so that until recently, the front door did not have a lock. I put one only recently,” says Satish. In the work area, a rosewood cot (about two feet wide and seven feet long) has been pushed against the wall. “That is one single piece of wood. Imagine the girth of the tree that was cut down to make this. This cot is easily more than 100 years old,” says Satish. Suman adds with a smile that this was the cot that was used in the labour room of their ancestral home.
The work area opens to a kitchen garden that used to have a cow shed.
The outdoor and the indoors meet seamlessly in Anand Nivas and nothing much has been disturbed inside. “But we had to make space for the bathrooms, which were once outside the house. And the kitchen was modernised,” explains Satish. He adds he is happy sharing the house with an assorted variety of civets, mongoose, snakes and frogs.
Suman remembers that when she came to live in the house, it used to be so quiet that they could hear the lion roar in the zoo and on certain days could even smell the sea, as the wind blew in from the coast. “I used to long to see people on the road. Right from the junction onwards the fields would start and go on till the beginning of Pangode,” she recalls even as incessant traffic makes itself heard inside the house.
Although Shyamala has the Herculean task of dusting the house, she says she enjoys doing it and the gardening too. “Early in the morning, the garden is full of sunbirds, parrots and woodpeckers. I would not want to trade my garden for anything else,” she says with a smile. Satish agrees that maintaining the house with its wooden rafters et al is not an easy task but he avers that is worth the effort. This house is certainly his castle.
(A column on houses in and around the city that are more than 50 years old.)
