In search of the forgotten 'bangla'

If walls could talk, the ancestral home of novelist, journalist and filmmaker Timeri Murari would have countless stories to narrate, including generations of family gossip, politics during the British Raj and the evolving streetscape in the last century on the little street in Kilpauk, Chennai.

But who is listening?

Murari's bungalow was once flanked by five huge lawns. Now, the gardens and house have shrunk to a fraction of their original size.

Across Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata and many other towns and cities, once spacious bungalows with vast gardens and open courtyards are being taken over by real estate developers intent on building high-rise luxury apartments.

Though some states, like Maharashtra, have heritage committees that protect heritage buildings, including those built in the colonial era, from being demolished or altered, other states don't have such committees. Tamil Nadu is one of them even though a Tamil Nadu Heritage Commission Bill has been drawn up. The bill is aimed at protecting and preserving the heritage and cultural properties of the state.

Brick by brick
“Growing up in Chennai, I would admire old bungalows while walking down the street. But slowly, they started to disappear and new high-rise buildings would take their place,” says digital media consultant Kiruba Shankar.

Shankar now aims to preserve ancestral homes, at least the memory of it, through Colonial Bungalows, a project that documents family homes older than 100 years. The year-old project focuses on residential buildings built during the British Raj. The project has identified over 50 bungalows across seven countries in South Asia including India, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Colonial Bungalows depends entirely on social networking. It has a page on Facebook where volunteers can suggest homes that fit the bill, upload images and contribute information. Volunteers include photographers, historians, culture junkies and anyone who has heard stories about the origins of the homes. It's a team effort.

“Why do it alone when you can have it crowd-sourced,” smiles Shankar. The condition of the houses and the expertise of volunteers is not a deal-breaker for Shankar. Houses can be in a pristine condition or dilapidated, and volunteers don't need to be qualified professionals, simply enthusiastic about such bungalows. “If a volunteer is able to discover a new bungalow, they are still
contributing. We can find someone else in the area to take photographs.
Everything from location, legend and even ghost stories contribute to the character of the house,” says Shankar.

The collection of photographs, snippets of history and folklore that come in from volunteers of the project will find a place in a crowd-funded coffee table book that is due to release at the end of the year.

According to volunteers, in most cases, homes face decay because it is expensive to restore them. Others are under threat because they lie in posh areas where the cost of land has shot up. Families struggling to maintain these houses are offered lucrative deals from developers and it's no wonder that they accept.

"We don't blame house owners as they go through the turmoil of choosing between family memories and a sizeable amount of money. But we need to hold on to the way of life, even if it's only in pictures," says Shankar.