Crystal Cottage on Old Thevara Road is an island of calm in a sea of chaos. At least 100 years old, the house has remained just as its builders designed it even as the city took birth, grew and thrived around it. Lakshmi Devi Menon, retired professor of English, St. Teresa’s College, who lives in it, says it is impossible to ascertain the exact age of the structure. “But it has always been lived in,” she says.
Her grandparents— grandfather, former Municipal Commissioner of Ernakulam, Achutha Menon and her grandmother, who retired as the District Educational Officer of Ernakulam, Madhavi Amma — lived in the house. Lakshmi’s mother, Padmini, got married in it to Gangadhara Menon and later came back to live in it after his retirement from Defence Accounts.
It almost seems like the house has resisted any attempt at modernisation. The only change it has accepted is a new-age bathroom with peppermint pink tiles built recently for the benefit of the some of the family members settled in the US. “In those days, the bathrooms were built outside the house,” says Lakshmi. “We have never thought of revamping the house,” says Lakshmi, who has built a modern house behind the old one, but lives here. “My mother was living here till she passed away a few months ago.” Lakshmi’s brother and sister live in the US.
The living room is a compact unit with large windows facing each other. The room leads to the thalam (the central open area). The thalam has been converted into a dining area. The single-storied house has two bedrooms, two store rooms, a spacious kitchen and a corridor which leads to it.
Even in the harshest of summers, the house is cool. The initial rains cause certain portions of the roof to leak, but the tiles seem to adjust to the weather and the leaking stops after the first two days. “It is a living entity,” says Vinay Menon, Lakshmi’s son and an IT professional, who vehemently opposed a suggestion to lay the floor with tiles. “It will completely ruin the character of the house,” he says. The wooden ceiling, the black oxide floors, wooden doors with shutters and old-fashioned bolts are perfectly functional, untroubled by age.
The laterite walls, however, give in like butter, when one tries to drive nails into them, Lakshmi says. Most of the furniture is antique— aattukattil (a giant swing suspended by wooden poles), four-poster bed, straight-back chairs, easy chairs and ancient mirrors. Lakshmi has also preserved the pathayam (a large wooden cabinet used for storage) and bharanis (traditional containers).
Maintenance needs effort. “Relaying the roof tiles is the most difficult part,” Lakshmi says. She does not remember when it was last done. “It is hard to find skilled labourers. The rafters have to be removed and it is labour intensive.” The house is swept and cleaned every day. “The last time we painted it, in 2007, we used emulsion. It was plain whitewash until then.”
The house stands on a plot, which was part of a large compound owned by Payyappillil family with its central ancestral house, ‘Sankara Vijayam’. Crystal Cottage was an extension of the house and was initially called ‘Vadakke Madom’. “I don’t know how it became ‘Crystal Cottage’,” says Lakshmi. The coloured window panes may perhaps have inspired an ancestor to name it thus, she suspects. Where one house once stood, ten houses now stand. The compound also included two ponds and a sarpakkavu (sacred grove) .
Crystal Cottage has two Ashoka trees flanking the gate, a giant jackfruit tree laden with fruit, a chickoo tree, and a mango tree. Lakshmi remembers a few more trees, which unfortunately had to be felled when her husband the late K. Balagopalan bought his first car.
It has an attic, too, which has some of the unused furniture stowed away, a family of cats and a few rodents. “We hear the cats above and sometimes when one door is shut, the others squeak. But that is the thing about old houses. They sway and creak,” Lakshmi says. And yes, they have a life of their own.
