If you did your schooling in Chennai, there is a good chance that you have already visited DakshinaChitra. The two-decade-old museum is one of the top excursion spots for kids, and quite predictably, “out of the two lakh footfalls per year, 50,000 are children” — a statistic that Deborah Thiagarajan, founder of the museum, is quite proud of. This way, Thiagarajan and her team believe, the awareness about traditional culture and architecture is being fed at the grass-root level. And unarguably so. It’s a dry class of history made interesting.
Each house is a reflection of the culture of a community and geography of a region. For instance, inside a Silk Weaver’s House, that the museum uprooted from Reddy Pattai Street, Chinna Kanchipuram, to Muttukadu, one finds a large loom instead of conventional furniture. Apparently, the silk weavers did not separate their professional and personal lives, and when they had to host a function at their house, they would simply move the loom to a different room.
Drenched in history
A few feet away are the Potter’s House from Chengalpet, built using mud and reed; and a Coastal Andhra House, known as Chutillu or ‘round house’, made out of strong cob walls that keep the raging winds at bay. Walk into the Syrian Christian House from Puthuppally, Kottayam District, Kerala, and suddenly, the architecture is vastly different. There is a long verandah, steeped roof, lots of underground storage area, granary and fine wood craft. Unlike the weaver’s and potter’s abodes, this one has a separate kitchen and dining hall — a clear indicator of westernisation and lots of dough.
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 10/12/2016: DakshinaChitra, a vibrant heritage museum, in Chennai. Photo: Shaju John
I visited the museum in December 2016, a few days ahead of their 20th anniversary on December 14, when DakshinaChitra, which has its roots in Madras Craft Foundation (started in 1984), first opened its doors to the public in 1996. The campus, which has been designed by the late Britain-born Indian architect Laurie Baker, buzzed with activity — the shamiana was being hoisted, rows of chairs were being placed in neat rows in front of a makeshift stage. Thiagarajan clarified that it was for a wedding that was to take place the next day. I learnt that the museum is open to giving out its green pristine spaces for those who fancy a wedding amid 200-year-old houses, want to take a quick bite at their campus restaurant, or host workshops or talks in seminar/activity halls that neighbour spacious halls for contemporary art. But these are just additional revenue options. The crowd-puller, of course, is the colony of houses drenched in history.
Each house, if not for the intervention of Thiagarajan and team, would long ago have been reduced to thin dust. The team has been collaborating with ‘conservators’, architects and timber merchants from certain villages, who double up as informants. Every time an owner of a house, across South India, decides to dismantle his or her old house, a team from DakshinaChitra is launched to the venue to rescue the unique piece of architecture. They have managed to curate almost 18 houses from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, within their 10-acre campus.
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 10/12/2016: DakshinaChitra, a vibrant heritage museum, in Chennai. Photo: Shaju John
In certain cases, such as the Tamil Nadu Merchant House, even the outside verandah has been authentically relocated and reconstructed from a 1895-built house in Ariyakudi Village, Ramanathapuram district.
Steeped in tradition
Sharath Nambiar, deputy director of DakshinaChitra, shows us the most recent one — a massive multi-room house from Chikmaglur in Karnataka. Built in 1914, it belonged to a trader called KA Mohamed Ismail, as mentioned in a faded plaque at the entrance. The project is quite a catch for the museum, as it represents the Muslim heritage of the region. Similarly, the two-storey laterite-and-timber house, acquired from a Menon family in Calicut, is representative of early 20th Century middle-class houses in the Central and Northern parts of Kerala.
Even as we walk in and out of these architectural marvels, certain elements in the house, such as an old black-and-white photo of the owner, a rusted plaque, or a slight chipping on the wooden wall, remind us that these were once private spaces that have seen family fights, intimate conversations, tears, laughter, and a tonne of memories. And that’s when we tread a little lighter, and almost reduce our conversations to whispers, as respect to the homes that have come a long way from their owners.
This is the third of a five-part series that explores museums of the city.
