In a heritage quarter like Sreevaraham, where row after row of agraharams stand tall, like packed pillar-boxes, their interiors just a step up from the street, Puthen Madom is one of the few anomalies. Not only is it stuck in a time warp, the double-storey tiled-roof house is as wide as it is tall, with a generous front yard that has enough space to park a car or two.
The house, which is almost a century old, is known locally as ‘Peshkar’ Madom, called so because it was the home of R. Mahadeva Iyer, Chief Secretary of erstwhile Travancore and Acting Dewan. “He died in harness in 1920, when this part of the building was half-finished. My grandmother, Gomathi Amma and her two sons completed the construction soon afterwards,” explains Leela Subramoni, retired professor and head, Department of English, All Saints’ College, who now owns the house. The interiors of the house are accessible through a long, covered veranda, which once stretched the length of the building. “There’s an equally long veranda at the back too. The house was originally built on around 50 cents of land and was partitioned in 1956,” she explains, pointing to the house next door, with which it shares a common wall. While the adjacent house has changed hands a couple of times and its features renovated irrevocably, Peshkar Madom still looks much like its original self, save the rather unimaginative extension built to one side (now, rented out). Thankfully, the extension doesn’t mar the front view of the house.
Once inside, it’s immediately several degrees cooler, which Leela attributes to the two-and- a-half feet thick granite stone walls of the house. The no-frills living room is sparsely furnished with just a few armchairs, dating back to the 70s, a massive wooden swing, which is even older, and a few framed photos/portraits of her ancestors, particularly a pencil sketch of her grandfather. “A portrait of my great-grandfather, Ramaswamy, painted by Raja Ravi Varma, once had pride of place in the living room but now I’ve put it away for safe-keeping,” she says.
To one side of the living room are a couple of bedrooms, again sparsely furnished. In fact, the entire house is rather utilitarian. The living room also leads to the kitchen and dining room. Leela tells us that originally there was an inner courtyard, which her grandmother covered up and made into her pooja room. The only remnant of it is a few thin wooden pillars and a tiny skylight. “The house was once flooded with sunlight. There was no need for artificial lights,” she says, switching on the lights to a small bedroom adjacent to the pooja room.
The bedroom, in turn, leads to another room and then another. The door of the third room is a thick iron grill, padlock and all – much like a prison cell! Was it a granary? A storeroom? A strong room? “It was actually my grandmother’s room!” says Leela, with a laugh. “Maybe this was where she stored the family money, jewellery, grains…and thought it needed a strong door to keep it all safe,” she ponders. Now, the rooms, particularly the last two, are used for storage – old brass lamps, vessels, suitcases, bric-a-brac… Beyond the dining room is the backyard, with an ancient well and an equally ancient lemon tree bursting with fruit. There’s also an outhouse, which was once the toilet/bathroom, before a few were built inside the house.
From the living room, a wooden staircase leads to the second floor. The staircase even has a door that can seal off the entire top floor. At the top of the staircase is also a tiny door that opens into the attic, by the smell of it, now an abode for the Asian palm civet! “There’s a staircase that leads from the attic down to the bedrooms,” says Leela as we crouch down to peer into the darkness. Upstairs is Mahadeva Iyer’s office/library. “The big desk belonged to my grandfather. The library once had hundreds of books, much of which has been lost over the years,” says Leela, as we make our way down to the veranda. She points to another building in the adjacent compound. “That was once our garage. Now, it’s a house in itself!”
Things may have changed in the rest of the world, but ‘Peshkar’ Madom has not.
(A column on houses in and around the city that are more than 50 years old.)
