7 months ago
2
Two-and-a-half-year-old Mahadiya is playing successful the sandy muttram (courtyard) of her ancestral location connected Chidambara Theru (Street) successful Udangudi, successful Thoothukudi district. The house, with thenar wood trusses and a tiled roof, was built by her great-great-great-grandfather. Ms. Mahadiya and her mother, who present unrecorded successful Chennai, person travel to Udangudi to walk their Pooja holidays. Her parent says that playing successful the soil volition boost her immunity and amended her hand-eye coordination.
Nazar, the contiguous proprietor of the house, says helium preserves it without modern alterations, honouring his grandfather’s insistence connected retaining the unfastened courtyard and sandy level for biology and climatic reasons. While galore houses, though retaining their aged structures, person covered the courtyards with roofs, Mr. Nazar has not.
“It is environmentally affable and volition beryllium precise chill astatine night,” says Mr. Nazar, who has brought masons from Chennai to repair the plastering that has peeled disconnected successful immoderate places. The location erstwhile had a pathayam (storage structure) and a abstracted country that functioned arsenic a labour ward. Mr. Nazar’s niece said the verandahs were besides made of clay and person lone precocious been replaced with concrete.
Anyone who visits Udangudi volition travel crossed rows of aged tiled-roof houses with thenar wood trusses connected each sixteen streets with Muslim inhabitants, including Periya Theru, Mohideen Puthu Theru, Puthumanai Mela Theru, Puthumanai Vadakku Theru, and Santhaikadai Theru. Giant neem trees flank some sides of the streets, offering extortion from vigor and nonstop sunlight. A fewer houses, which were beyond repair, person been replaced with factual structures.
Preserving aged structures
“The houses were demolished due to the fact that we could not find masons skilled successful repairing aged houses. Even if you find them, the earthy materials — lime, sand, gallnut (kadukkai), and different ingredients for making the paste — are costly and hard to travel by. Still, 90% of the houses proceed to past against each odds,” says M. Shaik Mohideen, explaining the community’s committedness to the preservation of aged structures.
Such houses were imaginable due to the fact that Udangudi, a hub of thenar sweetener manufacturing and different palm-based products, offered thenar wood for location construction. M.H. Nijamudeen, present 78 years old, says helium remembers seeing 90-year-old men surviving successful these aged houses erstwhile helium was a tiny boy. “It means the houses are much than 200 years old. They are environmentally friendly, and the one-and-a-half-foot-thick clay walls supply vigor resistance,” helium says.
Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) person M.H. Jawahirualla, a autochthonal of Udangudi, says the houses kindle memories of his childhood. “My father’s past location successful Puthumanai Mela Theru and my mother’s location successful Kalankudiyiruppu Periya Theru are inactive retained with their aged structure. The straight, well-planned streets boast a mosque and a burial crushed astatine 1 end. After lunch, the upwind flowing done the branches of the neem trees would lull you to sleep. Unforgettable days,” helium said.
