5. The secrets of the Sanctum Sanctorum

As with all traditional homes in India, the Katapadi house’s cultural heart was its Sanctum Sanctorum, the small temple where the family deity was enshrined. A regime of daily prayer and annual religious observances has been an unbroken tradition since the house was founded two hundred years ago. Earlier when the house was bustling and full of community members – residents and visitors alike – ceremonial food offerings were prepared in a dedicated kitchen overseen by a resident priest. By the time we visited, these elaborate traditional observances had been scaled down but some orthodox practices persisted – cows are considered sacred in Hinduism, so we needed to strip off our leather purses, wallets, and belts before entering the Sanctum Sanctorum. 

Within lay the religious icons of the family deity but also something more fascinating - a reminder of the family’s legendary origins. I saw five copper pots (called copparigas) with locking devices that were used to store valuables centuries ago. They came from a larger set of seven that had been discovered, stuffed with gold and silver, in the early 1800s by my forefather, the founder of the home, who was a poor smallholder tilling a meager farm and plied a fishing boat in the nearby hamlet of Pangal. He had squirreled the pots away, on a finders-keepers principle, after surviving a grilling in the hands of the local British Magistrate who’d heard rumors that treasure had been found and wanted to claim it as Crown property. After lying low for several years, he moved the family to Katapadi, where he bought rice fields, coconut and betel plantations by the river, and built the family home. 

Five of the seven historic treasure-filled copparigas (copper pots)

The family deity in whose name the house is endowed

Tulsi (holy basil) in the courtyard outside the Sanctum

A sample of the annual calendar of rituals observed since the 1820s