3. Voices from the past

The verandahs of the Katapadi house were where people did most of their day-to-day living. The women of the home supervised the work of receiving grain, coconuts, bananas, betelnut, and firewood from the fields and plantations surrounding the house. The produce would be graded and inspected for quality and organized for sale or storage. While rural Indian women of those times typically did not work outside, they were active managers and bookkeepers within the confines of the home. In my imagination, I heard their voices as they took stock of produce, checking for under-weight sacks of rice or soggy firewood, and laughing and chatting as they went about their work. The verandahs were also where male members of the clan would assemble for their meals after a day in the fields or markets, sitting cross-legged on the floor in long rows, each with a banana leaf placed before him, on which food would be served by the women. 

Cultural artifacts scattered around the house vividly brought their world to life. I saw iron rings fixed on the walls of the verandahs, so that people who seated themselves on the floor to eat could use them as grips to haul themselves up when they were done with their meal. In the kitchens were massive, now unused, wood-fired cooking stoves, on high counters with stepladders to reach them, along with enormous metal pots used to cook food for the whole community. Oil lamps made of brass, ready for use with cotton wicks and vegetable oil, hung from the carved wooden ceilings. One room had a 10 foot-long single-slab wooden plank that was used as a bed – one of seven such slabs cut with a custom-made steel saw from a dying wild jackfruit tree outside.  

The 100+ residents of the home in 1927