Standing the test of time

The century-old house on Punnen Road has seen the city change

January 23, 2015 06:09 pm | Updated January 24, 2015 02:30 am IST - Thiruvananthapuram

George Jacob's  century-old house on Punnen Road in Thiruvananthapuram. Photo: Saraswathy Nagarajan

George Jacob's century-old house on Punnen Road in Thiruvananthapuram. Photo: Saraswathy Nagarajan

This small house on Punnen Road exists in the shadow of high-rises that seem to be breathing down its neck. But exist it does, for more than 100 years now. Built in the traditional vernacular architecture of Kerala with its beautiful mukhappu (gables) and wooden windows set in arched spaces, it is hard to miss it on the busy road that leads to the Secretariat.

It has seen the city change from a quiet and gracious place to its modern version of cacophony and traffic jams. If once it saw bullock carts trundle by, at present the house without a name sees cars flashing red lights zip by. It has witnessed agitations of many kinds and police bandobasts too, since the road outside is an important route that VIPs now routinely take to reach the Secretariat when the main road is blocked. The passing traffic creates a rumbling that ceases only late at night.

Yet the house seems to exist on a serene island of its own, lost in time and proud of the space it occupies. George Jacob, its present owner bought it from Parvathy Nair in 1978 and he moved in with his young family and lived there till 1993. “Parvathy was a friend of mine and that was how I bought it when I learnt she was planning to sell it. It was a seven-cent plot with an old mango tree, a jamba (rose apple) and a lovely garden too. Road widening has swallowed all that and now the front door almost opens into the road. But back then, though this was a busy road, there were many houses here. Many of our neighbours in the vicinity, however, sold their property and moved out,” says Dr. Jacob, a dentist.

The house originally belonged to Parvathy’s maternal grandmother, Parvathy Amma, who was “inspectress of schools during the era of the erstwhile Travancore government. It was her ancestral property,” says Dr. George.

Even in the peak of summer, the house remains cool and pleasant due its thick walls made of mud bricks and lime plaster, and the wooden attic. A loft used to exist above the ground floor of the house and was accessible through a trap door from the only room upstairs. It was a storage space between the roof and the floor of the first floor. That has now been closed and wide verandahs that used to run around the house have been covered. Red linoleum covers the original cement flooring of the ground floor. The only place that floor is visible is on the tiny verandah outside the living room. Most of the alterations were done on the ground floor with partitions being built to demarcate the living and dining space. The old kitchen that used to face the road became the dining room and an adjacent room was built to accommodate a new kitchen.

Bathrooms were added and so also a kitchen. But the low wooden roof that cuts outs the harsh sunlight, the staircase, the wooden rooms and the room on the first room have not been changed. A door opens to the teak staircase that leads to the room upstairs. Narrow steps with an open landing at the top gives a bird’s eye view of the surroundings. Quaint windows open to the road outside and it is easy to imagine someone merely watching the world go by.

Dr. George says the staircase and the wooden windows and much of the roof are made of teak and that perhaps explains why they have lasted without much damage. After the doctor and his family moved out in 1993, the house has been used as a dental clinic. “It is not easy to maintain a house that is 100-plus years old and with so much of woodwork. There have been several offers for the house. But we are attached to his house and my children want to keep it this way. They grew up here and they are not willing to give it up,” he says. And the house exists, a gracious presence in an area that keeps changing every day.

(A fortnightly column on houses in and around the city that are more than 50 years old.)

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