The Last Tenants

15th August 2006

A caterer from Tamil Nadu was using the house. Appachi had asked him to vacate and he had agreed to do so by Onam (Aug-Sep).

The house was in shambles. It was being used a base for storage and manufacture of all the stuff required for the catering business. Sacks of flour lined the walls; two wet grinders stood in main hall for processing vast quantities of batter to make Vadas, Dosas and Idlis. A couple autos waited under a sheet of torn, blue plastic, awaiting delivery trips to assorted hotels & eateries. There was a clothesline in almost every room, and yet another one outside. Jerry cans full of inflammable cooking oil had been stored atop the wooden rafters.

The front portion of the house had been sublet to a person who hung tattered pieces of cloth on the doorway for curtains and partitions. The roof-tiles were broken in many places; water seepage had warped some of the beams and weakened some walls...

To our untrained, sentimental eyes all the damage seemed peripheral. “Remove the uneven overhanging tiles in the rear, replace the damaged ones and the house should be OK.”

Rajesh was more circumspect – “We cannot start work until the dampness has dried from the walls…the front portion (above the meter-box) is precarious- if somebody were to step on that corner, the whole roof would collapse…”

So the first imperative was to minimize further damage and decay. Work would have to start as soon as the tenants vacated; broken tiles would have to be replaced, damaged beams too would have to go.

Rajesh suggested some changes that would cost “around Rs. 50,000”. But we were wary of ad-hoc, ‘band-aid’ solutions. Who could help us in making repairs and renovations that would endure?

R-ji suggested that we approach Mr. Shankar. “He is a very busy man these days… but if you could get him to visit this place once, we would get the right way forward”

Some pics:















The section below the tiled room - the Thattumpuram