Chettinadu Mansions - Athangudi Case
Chettinadu Mansions - Athangudi Case
Happened to visit the village of Athangudi for a village survey project with a group of students from the architecture college where i am working. Just thought i would share my experience about visiting a village in the Chettinadu region which falls within Sivaganga district in Tamil Nadu. This region which i am talking about (Chettinadu) is very famous for its spicy cuisine. Anybody who would have come across this word chettinadu would associate it with the Chettinadu chicken curry which we invariably get in any restaurant in Tamil Nadu. Is cuisine the only reason for this region being famous or are there other things also that make this region famous. Apart from Alagappa Univ. in Kaaraikudi, Indias Finance/Home Minister Chdambaram who is from this region and certain other reasons there is some thing that is very less talked about and in the verge of extinction. It is the Architectural heritage of this region. Mainly the palatial bunglows of the region built around 100yrs ago.
As it was academic work, I could not see the whole region spread across a number of villages but got a glimpse and an idea by seeing one village that is Aathangudi. At the first sight anyone can make out that the main part of the village is sparsely populated. The empty streets, locked and damaged houses are a testimony to it. The village can be divided majorly in to two areas. One is the area which has a layout in the form of corrupted grid-iron pattern with large chettinadu mansions (seemed to be the older part) with very less people and the other can be called as a new extension typical of any other south Indian villages with not so well planned streets and houses. The latter area was more populated than the earlier one.
Questions arose on the emptiness of the village and on putting the question to the villagers we got our answers. According to them to a great extent all the mansions are empty or only a care taker lives there or the parents of the present owners live there as they don't want to leave their ancestral village. The main reason being the owners leaving the village in search of better business and job opportunities. Earlier during their hey days, the people from Chettinadu were big time banking and business community and traded in the various countries in South and South East Asia (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia etc.,). During those times the whole region of Chettinadu was very prosperous and the men in the family often visited their native villages. Their fortune got considerably low in the later years which made them leave their villages to different parts of the world. This i was made to believe is the case in almost all the villages in the region.
I have been talking about mansions of Chettinadu. What are these actually. The Chettinadu mansions are those which were built by the prominent business men of the region to accommodate their large joint families. Here I would request you to have a look at photographic documentation (just the exterior) of some of these mansions done by me during the trip.
I hope the photographs would have given a brief idea about the chettinadu mansions which i am talking about. Here you have just seen the exterior of the houses. The interiors of each of these mansions is even better. Pure Burma teak wood work, with carving which we may not be possible now a days, wonderful coloured tiles with glazing, courtyards, stained glass windows, stone and wood columns are different features found in most of these mansions. I am sure you would be restless to see some interiors as well. Here they are.
Happened to visit the village of Athangudi for a village survey project with a group of students from the architecture college where i am working. Just thought i would share my experience about visiting a village in the Chettinadu region which falls within Sivaganga district in Tamil Nadu. This region which i am talking about (Chettinadu) is very famous for its spicy cuisine. Anybody who would have come across this word chettinadu would associate it with the Chettinadu chicken curry which we invariably get in any restaurant in Tamil Nadu. Is cuisine the only reason for this region being famous or are there other things also that make this region famous. Apart from Alagappa Univ. in Kaaraikudi, Indias Finance/Home Minister Chdambaram who is from this region and certain other reasons there is some thing that is very less talked about and in the verge of extinction. It is the Architectural heritage of this region. Mainly the palatial bunglows of the region built around 100yrs ago.
As it was academic work, I could not see the whole region spread across a number of villages but got a glimpse and an idea by seeing one village that is Aathangudi. At the first sight anyone can make out that the main part of the village is sparsely populated. The empty streets, locked and damaged houses are a testimony to it. The village can be divided majorly in to two areas. One is the area which has a layout in the form of corrupted grid-iron pattern with large chettinadu mansions (seemed to be the older part) with very less people and the other can be called as a new extension typical of any other south Indian villages with not so well planned streets and houses. The latter area was more populated than the earlier one.Questions arose on the emptiness of the village and on putting the question to the villagers we got our answers. According to them to a great extent all the mansions are empty or only a care taker lives there or the parents of the present owners live there as they don't want to leave their ancestral village. The main reason being the owners leaving the village in search of better business and job opportunities. Earlier during their hey days, the people from Chettinadu were big time banking and business community and traded in the various countries in South and South East Asia (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia etc.,). During those times the whole region of Chettinadu was very prosperous and the men in the family often visited their native villages. Their fortune got considerably low in the later years which made them leave their villages to different parts of the world. This i was made to believe is the case in almost all the villages in the region.
I have been talking about mansions of Chettinadu. What are these actually. The Chettinadu mansions are those which were built by the prominent business men of the region to accommodate their large joint families. Here I would request you to have a look at photographic documentation (just the exterior) of some of these mansions done by me during the trip.
I hope the photographs would have given a brief idea about the chettinadu mansions which i am talking about. Here you have just seen the exterior of the houses. The interiors of each of these mansions is even better. Pure Burma teak wood work, with carving which we may not be possible now a days, wonderful coloured tiles with glazing, courtyards, stained glass windows, stone and wood columns are different features found in most of these mansions. I am sure you would be restless to see some interiors as well. Here they are.
I hope after seeing these photographs both the exteriors and the interiors one would understand the worth of heritage in our hands, and remember i have put up photographs of only some residences of a single village. The entire Chettinadu region (constituting more than 50 villages) is filled with these kind of mansions. The main reason behind writing this is to bring out the importance of these houses and secondly the status of these residences. Though there are so many palatial residences in the region, it wont be long before we lose them all.
The case of Aathangudi village is itself a true example. As far as I saw in the Village around 30% to 50% of these mansions have either been demolished or in a very bad state of repair. The main reason behind this according to the villagers is the high cost of maintaining these huge mansions and as always when something is put to disuse its going to fall someday, the same is happening here.
So i end by raising some questions which came into my mind.
Are not these mansions a part of architectural heritage of the Chettinadu region or our state Tamil Nadu or our country India????
Should not these mansions be documented properly???? to understand their worth......
Why have not these been understood properly....
At the outset we can feel the importance of these mansions......but how much can we save.....who is the stake holder and who is responsible????
or
Is it going to die a natural death......
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