Home Sweet Home

Exploring the interwoven gullies of Kathmandu can be a great pastime. The end results of such explorations vary. It won’t be a surprise if the inquisitive and intrepid traveller, passing through a narrow and dimly-lit passage by minding the sapien head, arrives at a chowk (a courtyard), the common property of several houses with a stupa, a chaitya or a temple at the centre along with a well. 

Besides, how wise the planners of the yore must have been to realise the importance of open space even at a time when there probably was no dearth of breathing space! Paintings of the 18th century, including the works of HA Oldfield, show the Bagmati flowing in spate and fertile fields all around, with minimal sapien footprint in the form of a handful of structures like old palaces, temples, the British residency, Dharahara and sparse settlements. Looking at those works of art, one wonders if beautiful Apsaras (angels) used to descend on the valley for both holy and beauty baths in the Bagmati. 

The urban planners and architects of the yore must have foreseen that human settlements will only grow in the fertile valley in the centuries to come, necessitating free spaces in the middle of conjoined houses made mostly of traditional clay bricks, timber and tiles. Planners of this day and age are yet to realise, perhaps, that these houses, standing shoulder to shoulder, give each other cumulative strength, making them better prepared to withstand a temblor or two or  too many in this seismic fault zone.   

The yards bathed in sunlight seem to have frozen in time with very many eyes of those traditional, artistic windows — Sanjhya, Mayurjhya, etc. — gazing at the empty spaces nostalgically. One wonders if the spirits of the sapiens of the yore are, through those artistic windows, looking at the strange traveller who has dropped by their yard, with curiosity and caution. Travelling by, one gets the impression that these traditional houses, few and far between these days, needing repair and standing uncomfortably in a rapidly-expanding urban jungle, will cease to be part of the Kathmandu landscape soon. 

Indeed, with concrete houses soaring from the rubble of their cousins, these lonely houses seem to cut a sorry figure. Personal experience suggests that encounters with these ancient beings are almost always heart-breaking as they trigger a deluge of memories associated with the ancestral home made on the lap of verdant hills in the West, standing shakily for want of caring hands. With people leaving for towns, cities, metropolises and beyond, monkeys have a free rein in the villages these days. Thanks to a mad rush for concretisation, very few people want traditional Nepali houses to keep standing. There’s a general impression that only those people who cannot afford to build modern houses make do with traditional ones. 

Especially after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, this rush for concretisation has been gaining a frenzied pace, thanks to an emphasis on building RCC structures. As a result, old-style houses, which are in sync with nature and seem to blend perfectly with our landscapes, are hard to find in our villages and towns, leave alone the metropolises. Per scriptures, we all are made of five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. Traditional houses are embodiments of these elements. We live in houses and houses live in us, with loads of memories associated with our ancestors.  With the razing of each traditional house, something in us is dying—and fast. We all need to preserve these heritages before it’s too late.