The main entrance faces East. To the East is the rest of India. To the West is the Arabian Sea. Currently, there is no door, just a grill gate. Except for the furniture, no wood has been used in the house. I intend to get a wooden door here. A local carpenter provides doors with elaborate carvings. The masonry is intentionally exposed to give the house rustic look. If you look closely at the grill you will see a small black doll hanging. It is called a "Drishti Bombey". Locals use it to ward off the evil eye.
Above is the West side of the house facing the ocean. Here too it is just a grill. When it rains, water comes in. No big deal, I just use a wiper to push the water out. Keeps the floors clean. I have to think of something to keep the rain water out during three/four months of the year. The constant breeze coming in is awesome. Closing it off with glass would be a waste. If you look closely on top of the picture, you will see some hung plumbing pipes. This was the only convenient place I could think of to secure them. Things have a tendency to sprout legs here and walk away.
The skylight is covered by a plastic tarp and water seeps in as well. What the heck, it is only water and the monsoons is almost over. I will cover it with a piece of translucent fibre sheet. Needs some investigation.
Off the coast is an island that can be seen from the sea facing bedrooms. The view above is what you see from my bed. The sea facing rooms are the only rooms that have Sliding Windows currently, with screens to keep the mosquitoes out. By and by more Windows will be installed.
And this is what you see from the window. The structure in the picture has five rooms, three of which are being used as storage, one room has no roof (collapsed) and the window you see is the local Post Office. It is situated right outside my door step. Some day I will rebuild this to have cabins for tourists.
Above is my bed. Yes there are mosquitoes here too despite the wind. The brown pieces of cloth you see are to keep mosquitoes from biting my hands. There are similar pieces protecting the legs.
What you see is my cutting table and refrigerator. On the cutting table is a water filter and also my cutting board. On top of the fridge is the "kodopana" which is the steel pot that I use to draw water from the well and pour into the filter. I don't boil the water. It is clean filtered well water and tastes good.
And here is my temporary cooking table. It used to be my computer desk. I plan to move the gas cylinder to the other side of the wall after making a small hole in it. It will then be in the utility room which is accessible from the outside. This way the delivery man can just drop off a filled cylinder and pick up the empty one without having to come into the kitchen.
The kitchen sink is temporarily balanced on two columns of bricks. Yes the kitchen has to be modeled as opposed to re-modeled!
These are pictures of one of the bathrooms. The other is a mirror image of this one. The other bathroom has two doors. One that opens into the guest room and the other door opens into the hall. One of the guest rooms has its own bathroom that is also shared.
What you see as you enter is the wash basin.
Turning right after entering the bathroom is the commode and the bath area. The sewage system consists of a septic tank. The sink and bath water flows into a sand pit.
A 200 litre Solar Hot Water system provide ample hot water. 
My temporary phone connection that includes Broadband comes in through the Ventilator Window.
To my temporary Workstation. I have found a Computer Desk in town. I just need to pick it up one of these days.
And now let me explain the life cycle of my clothes. Even the bare minimum clothes I use I think is excessive. Anyway, they hang in the open hanging closet. Notice the lungi (mundoo) hanging loose. Clothes to be washed are put in the hamper.
The washing machine is in the unfinished Utility Room. Washed clothes are hung to dry there and then moved to the open hanging closet. No need to fold clothes except the sheets. There you have it the highlights of the insides.
6 comments:
Nice to see that things are moving along. We've been wanting to visit for some time now but every weekend, something or the other comes up. This past weekend was the latest aborted trip because the guys who were to build our staircase were supposed to start work. But we waited and they never came!
George.
Typical "no show" work culture in these parts. Worse is that they do a little work, then work some place else, and come back some other time to continue or finish. The tendency is to juggle multiple customers, rather than loose one because they are on a job.
Dad,
Joel had a good idea for your water issue with the door. You should make a lower door and upper door cover the lower door would on the ground and would keep the water out while the upper portion could remain open.. you would have to use some water resistant materials for this instead of wood..
Anisha
I like the idea. The monsoons are almost over, so I have till next June to work on it!
My Dear Rajan,
I suggest a topological inversion (something like matrix inversion; but more complicated). Then, the outer universe will be within your home and you will be outside, in the freed clutterless universe.
Apart from this didactic suggestion, through which slot will the postman drop in the letters?
Yours, with awe-struck admiration at your sheer courage to be yourself,
Vasanth
(For most of us, our courage and conviction quotient is less than 10%)
Dear Vasanth,
Sorry it took me so long to answer the "postman" question. I wanted to get some solid experiential data. It's like this, the local Post Office is just outside my house on the West Side. The Postman sees me, shouts, "Oi" and hands them to me personally. Otherwise he holds it for me if i am out of town. How is that for service?
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