Wednesday 30 March 2016

And a roof succumbs to the march of modernity.

We lived in a beautiful thatched house, for 15 years, thatched with bodha  (Cymbopogon nardusgrass from the forest When freshly thatched it was a golden hue, and the home would be drenched with the small of lemon grasss. It was cool in summers, and warm in wintes, and to sleep under a roof made of bamboo, palmyra fibres and bodha would bless the sleep.
It did mean work. When rats would burrow into the thatch, it would leak during rains. This would happen every raintime , and we would put mud pots under each leaky point to protect the mud floor. If the termites built a small hill over the gap between the wall and the roof the thatch would get eaten away. Daily alerness was needed.
So in the raintime we would go to Jalabba in Bandakadapalle, who would say 'Potha undu. Vasthaanu' ('Keep going, I will come'). And we would wait, and he would never come as he would have had other plans, maybe labour in some field, or maybe a temple visit. This would be the routine every morning for a week, and then finally one day he would descend with his thatching equipment. We would have already carried down sugarcane leaf for the repairs from some field where sugarcane would have been harvested.. Everything did take time, but this was time spent in establishing a community, and relationships, and livlihoods. And it was an integral part of living in a village.
But slowly, everyone in this village, and every other village bought the dream of upmarket cement homes, the one-roomed boxes as per government Aawas Yojana schemes. The thatcher was not in demand any more, and he took more to drink. He grew older, and his son refused the profession. A skill quietly dies. A sustainable skill.
When we need to rethatch last year our neighbours advised against it. Lakshmamma was clear. She said, 'If the skill is not there, the bodha will slide down, and the roof will not last.'. She was right. 
In earlier times, they used to say that a bodha roof would last 30 years. When we thatched first 16 years ago, it lasted 10 years. The re-thatching lasted 5 years. After much agonizing we decided it. The cost of cutting and getting bodha from the forest was huge. Our house has a big roof. And with present wage rates as decided by NREGA the whole cost of reroofing could be 50,000 to 1 lakh. We could not afford that for a possible time period of 2-3 years.
Now we have succumbed to the march of modernity, and we have a metal sheet for a roof. The beauty is lost. The home is hot in summers, and we go and sit under the tree outside. And when it rains the raindrops thunder on the roof. That is modernity. Still its home. And its beautiful. As is our village also.

Things are changeing so rapidly.
Our village home has a thatch - good forest grass thatch that keeps the place cool and wonderful. But the thatchers are a dwindling community. Two are too old, and the only available thatcher (middle age) is a drunk. The quality of thatching has been falling over years. They say that a good thatch has a lifetime of thirty years, traditionally. In our case it lasted for 10 years. then we re-thatched, and its lasted for 5 years.
Lakshmamma (seventy years and old and wise) was telling me not not go for thatch. She says, that the quality of tying it needs will be compromised, and the roof will then slip slowly, and its life will be drastically lower. She tells me that times have changed.
So do we go for a 'cement house' (as the village so fervently advises) , or for a 'tin roof' ... i suppose it hardly matters. The larger reality of sustainable skills getting so rapidly lost, and of employment generating activities dying out is the only concern. The last person who could weave rope beds is dead. The persons who have made lime from limestone are on their last leg ...
The inexorableness of modernity.
Our roof was of bodha, the forest grass. This is the traditional roofing in our villages, and would if well done last for thirty years.
When we built our home in 1995, the thatching done lasted till 2010, for fifteen years. The reroofing we did lasted for five years till 2015. But by 2015 the labour costs made cutting and getting bodha from the forest almost prohibitive. Still I was unable to let go mentally. Then Laksmamma, old and wise, explained to me that the thatchers are also weaker in their skills now as the older thatchers cannot thatch anymore. And that if the tying is not done with skill and tightness, the roof will slide down and not last long.
After much agonising we finally decided that we could not afford the huge cost for a possible life period of a few years. We juggled with potter tiles as an option, but as that is not a local roof, again maintainance costs could be high. Given financial constraints, we decided that following local norms would be most viable. That is this ungainly blue roof now ! That I am totally ashamed of.
It is very hard to stand alone - even practically. When the whole village was thatched, the thatchers were a live community, and the skills were retained. As everyone went towards the government subsidised, and mainstream promoted, small housing colony rooms, the thatchers lost their cliente and moved to labour and other occupations. They made sure their children would not become thatchers, and 'schooled' them. A sustainable, and environmentally correct, skill has almost died today. The loss is inestimable.

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