THE PEOPLE

HOUSES AND HOUSING

Housing patterns have undergone considerable changes, particularly in urban areas. The old houses of the well-to-do living in joint families consisted of a front and back part, separated by a small open court on each side of which used to be a passage and in the upper storey an open terrace connecting front and back parts of the house.

Houses of the old aristocracy and landed gentry were built round a chauk or quadrangle with stone or burnt brick walls, tiled roofs and verandahs. These houses were generally two-storeyed. The door at the entrance was often quite large and imposing, having a small gateway called dindi. Inside, surrounding the chauk, were broad osaris or verandahs with a devadi, a watchman's place and an office room. On crossing the chawk a few steps led to the oti. The house was always raised on a plinth two or three feet high. Strangers were received on this oti and children played or women did their knitting etc. The ground floor had half a dozen rooms, a central hall and a back oti, opening into the rear yard. There were rooms for sleeping, for keeping accounts, a kitchen and a room for the house-gods. On the upper storey would be some rooms and a spacious hall. In the rear of the house, there would be a cattle-shed, a bathing room and a privy located in a distant corner. There would also be flowering trees and banana trees and tulas (holy basil) planted in a masonry pillar-post and rooms for servants.

Common people's modest houses are generally ones with walls of dressed or un-worked stone, burnt or sun-dried bricks and tiled or flat roofs. They are to be found both in towns and villages. A house of this type consists of an osari front verandah, which is used as a office or place of business, a majghar or central room for dining and sitting, a deoghar or a room for the house-gods, a kitchen and a spare room. There is a cattle-shed usually at the back of the house, a separate privy and a bath-place or nhani.

Houses occupied by the peasantry are of un-burnt brick walls, tiled or dhaba roof and having only two or three rooms. Poorer farmers, farm-workers and Harijans live in single-roomed houses of mud and stone or mud-wattled reed walls with dhaba or tin or corrugated iron sheets for roof. But in parts of the district where sugar-cane crops and sugar factories have come up, the houses have a much prosperous look. Even nicely-built and well-furnished bungalows are not scarce in such parts.

In urban areas the tendency now is to build cement-concrete houses, having two or three room self-contained flats, many of which are put up by housing co-operative societies. People of better means have their own spacious bungalows with gardens in front and back. This is particularly noticeable around Ahmadnagar town and cantonment and other urban areas.

TOP