Margazhi and Mylapore are strictly inseparable, almost joint at the hip — like New Orleans and its jazz festival or the carnival in Rio. During the season, the streets are decorated with more kolams than the eye can see, mada veedhis are filled with the sounds of bhajans and kritis early in the morning, and the area’s strong connection with Carnatic music is reinforced. As part of the recently-concluded Mylapore festival, a couple of architecture students conducted a heritage walk on Sunday, on ‘Houses of Mylapore’. Part of the Triple O Studio, an architecture and design firm, the students’ initiative was to identify heritage houses that were older than 50 years, recognise conservation efforts and create a dialogue about the significance of culture, heritage and history through architecture.
The turnout is sizeable for a Sunday morning; as a result, the participants are split into two groups of 30-35 and commence the walk from the Kapaleeswarar Temple. Much is already known about Mylapore. That the area might have been home to peacocks, is one of the oldest settlements and is a place where Carnatic music thrives. Anisha, who leads one of the groups, starts out with a talk on the history of Mylapore settlements to establish why we are going to explore some of the houses and buildings.
The first stop is at Kumaragurunathan Street to view an agraharam. The house has all the markings of typical agraharam architecture: a thinnai, which is considered the most public space of the house; a narrow passage that leads well into the house’s interior, a courtyard that serves as temperature regulator (it is cooler inside even at 7.30 a.m.) and wall-to-wall construction between houses that ensures families are essentially one large community and helps them share resources such as a common well for drawing water. Some of the commonly used materials to build houses are pot-shaped and Mangalore tiles and wooden beams. Agraharam houses also, obviously, placed importance on the roofs opening up to a view of the temple gopuram; a visual connect to the resident god.
Even as the subtle fragrance of the parijata flowers mixed with the strong odour of cowdung water (used to sanitise the ground before drawing kolam), we trudge into the houses to get a glimpse of the charming row homes. But it isn’t just agraharam houses that are studied — British era houses complete with Corinthian columns, houses with an amalgamation of classical, Indian and Mughal characteristics, houses with Madras terrace ceilings and those with wrought iron balustrades (essentially houses that were built before 1930, because, after that concrete came into play) are intensely observed and photographed. While most of the houses are simple, opting for shades of cream, some of the agraharam houses are painted in alternating vertical stripes of ochre and white. With the advent of industrialisation, many houses incorporated steel and even section beams from the Railways, possibly because of symmetry and engineering.
Post-1930 architecture introduced houses to a mix of Art Deco and the classical: think geometric shapes, rich ornamentation and sunburst designs in jalis . Some houses combined classic agraharam and neo-classical architecture that gave way to Gothic-like structures, more woodwork and influences such as the tripartite windows, commonly found in Portuguese houses. It is a motley crowd, and a lot of the information is drowned thanks to the noisy, narrow streets of the area and the general disorderliness.
The enthusiasm of the organisers was infectious, but the walk would’ve benefited with a little more research and, perhaps, some order. Nevertheless, it was a Sunday morning well spent.
