“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The “I” is chained
to ancestry by many factors. This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.”
– Erwin
Schrödinger (1887–1961), Nobel Laureate
The village of Bangalore is said to have been gifted to Kempe Gowda I (1513–1569) by
the Vijayanagar emperors. The Ulsoor Lake was built by his successor, Kempe Gowda II,
and is the only surviving tank built by the Gowda kings in Bangalore. The
first British military station was set up in Halasuru in 1807.
Halasuru is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city of Bangalore. Earlier, Halasuru
was considered to be in the eastern part of Bangalore with a dominant Tamil-speaking
population. Halasuru is renowned for its numerous temples and narrow streets. There
used to be a jackfruit orchard near the Ulsoor Lake, and the Kannada name
for jackfruit being ‘Halasina hannu,’ the area came to be known as ‘Halasuru’ (‘uru’
means ‘town’ in Kannada). During the British rule, the name was anglicised to ‘Ulsoor.’
Most of the residents of Halasuru were either from the working class or were smalltime traders or contractors. Now it is very much part of central Bangalore and has
become cosmopolitan.
Every house will have an address; #32, Madras Road, Ulsoor, Bangalore was the
address when Raghavachari bought the house from Kistnaiah in 1877. Just as the house
went through several modifications over time, the address underwent changes on a
couple of occasions. When I write about modifications in my forthcoming blogs, I will
mention the address changes.
Our ancestral home was already seventy-three years old
when I was born. Most of the information that I have
gathered about my ancestral home is from my paternal
grandmother Kaveriammal, who moved into this house
sometime during 1901 from Nellore after her marriage to M
A Srinivasachar – the eldest son and second child of
Raghavachari. Over the years, I learnt more about my
paternal forefathers and the house from Prof. M Narayana
Iyengar—Kaveriammal’s brother, who was a Professor of
Mathematics—since he was also the son-in-law of Kanakammal (Atthanga paati), who
was the first new-born (1877) in my ancestral home. While buying the house, Raghavachari got some
valuables along with it – A unique Tanjore painting of Lord Srinivasa , a replica of
which is supposed to be in the Srirangam Ranganatha Temple and the
Melkote Cheluvanarayanaswamy Temple and
nowhere else; a painting of the ‘English Durbar’ that
was exclusively held for British officers during
Dasara at Mysore, which is a replica of the painting
on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, with the only other copy at
Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore (many have visited our ancestral home just to have look at
these two paintings!) and another Tanjore painting, that of a popular motif – Baby
Krishna.
During the nineteenth century many houses did not
have any gate or door in the front and our ancestral
home was no exception. The main door was some
sixteen feet inside. There were two tinnais (pyols or
raised platforms) in the front veranda. In addition to
being used by the family members of the house—
mostly the menfolk sat on the tinnai to engage in
casual banter—strangers too could take rest there
without entering the house. Sometimes, their needs
—like water or food—would be taken care of by the members of the household. This is
just an illustration of the hospitality of the people in the bygone days.
The house had two verandas – one in the front after the tinnais and the other at the
back. As one entered from the front veranda, there was a big hall and six rooms – three
to the right and three to the left, in addition to the dining hall and kitchen. One room
was exclusively assigned for women who had delivered babies (It was called ‘Pillai petta
room.’) Since 1877, starting from Kankammal (1877–1973), more than twenty members
of my family, including me and my younger sister Dr. Vijayalakshmi (b. 1955) were born
in our ancestral home. It was only since 1963, when my youngest sister Latha was born,
babies were delivered at hospital.
There was one shelf in the dining hall called ‘Ganga porai’ (‘Ganga shelf’). I came to
know much later—circa 1960, why the shelf got such a name. When the house was
bought, there was a small shelf (depth in the wall) in which water from the sacred river
Ganga was kept. When people die, there was a practice of feeding a few spoons of the
holy water to the corpse. After people turned fifty, they typically visited pilgrimage
centres such Haridwar and Banaras, collected water from the Ganga, and brought it
home.
The house was built with bricks covered with mud
and later a coat of lime. The roof at a height of
eight feet was laid on a bamboo structure covered
with mat and mud mixed with lime. The top of the
roof was coated with some mix to make it
waterproof. The roof was supported by wooden
pillars. There was a small raised platform in the
kitchen on which the fireplace for cooking was
built (called addupu in Tamil) with stone, bricks,
and mud. The toilet was some forty feet away
from the back of the house. There was an independent puja room, which doubled as a
store room. In the evenings the house was lit with oil lamps; electrification happened much later.
On any given day, there were between eight and fifteen people living in the house.
There were even couple of weddings performed in the house, which I will write about later.
February 01, 2021 | Ravi 37
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