THE PEOPLE

HOUSES

HOUSES AND HOUSING.

According to the 1951 Census, there were 167,957 occupied houses in the district (61.8 per sq. mile), 150,716 in the rural area (56.4 per sq. mile), and 17,241 in the urban area (409.5 per sq. mile). These occupied houses accommodated 189,468 households, 170,097 in the rural area and 19,371 in the urban area. This gives an average of 1.12 households for each occupied house both in urban and rural areas.

Houses.

The types of houses built in the district vary with the locality and the stage of development and culture of the community to which the inhabitant belongs. The Kunbi's house is never of stone, and is never built round a quadrangle. It is raised on a plinth a foot or two high, and is a squarish one-storied block built of mud and gravel or wattle walls, a roof tiled in villages near the coast, and in other parts thatched with grass or bundles of rice straw or palm leaves and held up by wooden posts let in at the corners and the gables. The rafters are generally bamboos or jungle wood. The front yard or angane, which is sometimes used as a threshing-floor, has several mud-smeared wicker-work rice frames, kangas, and rows of cowdung cakes drying in the sun. Inside the house and round three sides of it runs a beam to which the cattle are tied. In the centre of this cattle-place, gotha, is the open space, vathan, where the men smoke and sleep; in the far corner is the enclosed cook room, vovara, and overhead is the loft, mala, a sort of lumber room. In the back yard, paras, are the well, the privy, and some vegetables. Similar is the dwelling of the Agri agriculturist of Khdrepat villages in the district. It is usual-ly a quadrilateral structure, with stones for foundation mats made from hay and plastered with thick mud for walls or partitions and a few wooden poles to support the thatched roofing. A few steps from the yard takes one to the oti, fenced on either side by blind walls; a door in front opens on to a central apartment on either side of which lie a kitchen and a store-room. A loft made up of bamboo and wooden poles, extending from wall to wall of the central apartment, holds all the household requirements. A fire-place in a kitchen-room usually faces west though a house may be built conveniently to face any direction. Out of few windows, one is invariably situated near the fire-place. Small earthen pots are buried in walls to be used as niches. Of late Agris of some-means have taken to build better houses with tiled roofs and walls of baked brick. [Kale D. N. The Agris, p. 56]

Houses of middle-class tradesmen such as Vanis are one-storied mud-built structures covered with tiles. In front of the house is an open shed, angane, in which is the shop. Their stock-in trade is laid out on the veranda, or ota. Inside is the central hall, majghar, with idols set in niches in the wall. On one side of the central hall is the cook-room. Next to it is a room where the women do all the house work, and grind and pound grain. On one side of it is the bathing place. Behind the house, is an open yard with basil plant on a pillar, and, behind this, the stable, with cows, buffaloes, bullocks, and in a few houses a horse or a pony. The value of such houses varies from Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 5,000. The dwellings of the better class of townsmen are two-storied with tiled roofs and brick walls. Each house, especially along the coast stands in a separate garden. Owing to the dampness of climate the houses are built on plinths from two to three feet high. The plinths are of stone rubble and mortar, faced with dressed trap or laterite. The walls are a framework of wood filled with baked or sun-dried bricks with a coating of mud or white wash or bright blue or yellow plasters. Trap stone is used for government and public buildings for foundation, plinth and walls. In rare cases large houses are built round a quadrangle,' but the ordinary shape is rectangle. The roof often overhangs in front, leaving an open space called padvi, which is sometimes enclosed with iron bars. From this, one or two steps lead to the veranda, oti, an open space let into the house. From the veranda the house is entered. It is divided into a number of low, badly-lighted rooms with a narrow steep stair leading to the upper storey. Some of these houses with modern amenities have two rooms and a central hall on each floor, with necessary and bathing rooms. The value of such houses varies from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 15,000.

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