One morning final yr, whereas the remainder of Puducherry was quick asleep, Sudeep Sen, a Bengali poet, was engaged on a brand new piece. The protagonist was an iron protected embedded in a wall of his room on the Gratitude Heritage homestay.
“In Room 4, the protected within the wall has not been opened in a 150 years…It has seen historical past, life altering, getting older — however nobody is aware of what lies inside. However what’s inside? — The primary proprietor’s ashes, her will, wealth, gold; previous currencies, lover’s relics?” the primary couple of stanzas learn.
Whereas this does make for a really compelling learn, Siddarth Saikia, the proprietor and supervisor of affairs on the homestay, says it isn’t a chunk of fiction; the protected exists. “The secret’s misplaced in time, and the protected’s outer body bears many markings. Many have tried to prise it open to verify what it comprises, but it surely gained’t budge,” he shares.
Even an expert locksmith, who couldn’t get by, knowledgeable Siddarth and the household that the protected’s rusted interiors and strategic place inside the wall meant that the one option to crack it open could be to interrupt down the wall itself. And nobody wished to resort to this feature.
So, to at the present time, the protected lies untouched by the fingers of time, holding inside it many mysteries and including its personal little little bit of intrigue to the property.
However, enticing as it’s, this isn’t the one draw on the Gratitude Heritage homestay helmed by a mother-son duo from Delhi. The colourful yellows of the bungalow are a sight for sore eyes, its format providing pockets of sudden calm to the weary traveller or to anybody who comes on the lookout for some peace and quiet.
Would you consider it should you have been advised that no more than 20 years in the past, this sprawling paradise was a “crumbling and dilapidated spot”?
We didn’t, and so, Siddarth settled down for a tete-a-tete with The Higher India, to unpeel the fascinating layers that lie beneath the homestays’ previous.
‘My mom fell in love with a crumbling home’
Jyoti Cariappa Saikia (67), a staunch devotee of Shri Aurobindo — who can also be credited with inspiring the Auroville Township challenge — would make frequent journeys to Puducherry. It might be beautiful to have a spot of my very own, she thought. However months of scouting for residences yielded no outcomes. Till someday, in 2004, when Jyoti noticed a crumbling residence that was up on the market.
The proprietor, an aged girl in her seventies was trying to relocate to Marseille in France the place her youngsters had moved. Elated on the “pure coincidence”, Jyoti made a suggestion for the property.
When requested the rationale for her spur-of-the-moment determination, she says it was a particular vibe. “It made it not possible to stroll away regardless that I had set out on the lookout for a smaller and easier-to-maintain condo,” she reiterates.
We don’t blame her. The 200-year-old story of Gratitude Heritage would pale any historical past lesson compared.
It has watched the world evolve; from the 18th century — when Puducherry was rife with merchants, engineers and builders who got here to work with the French East India Firm — to the current day. It’s plain that the French left their indelible imprint on the town; the city nonetheless displays French sensibilities within the language, artwork, tradition and the settlements.
And Gratitude Heritage is one among historical past’s best-kept secrets and techniques.
The story of the house traces again to the early 1700s when Abraham Guerre, from the French-speaking province of St.Imier in Switzerland, got here to Puducherry to work as a hospital administrator with the French East India Firm. Abraham and his spouse Marie Brunet had 9 youngsters, the third of whom Jacques Guerre inherited the home and bought it to a gentleman Francois Ulmans Marie Clark Michel in 1940.
It was one among Francois’s descendants who bought the house to Jyoti, who noticed the placement as an incentive to be in shut quarters to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Her thoughts was already racing with concepts of restoring the property to its unique glory, equipping it with facilities whereas preserving its historic mystique.
Jyoti credit architect Ajit Koujalgi of INTACH (Indian Nationwide Belief for Artwork and Cultural Heritage) for lending his experience to see this to fruition. She remembers, “I keep in mind some fascinating aspect journeys on the lookout for genuine doorways, home windows, and picket beams to revive and construct the property. It was difficult and time-consuming however largely pleasurable.”
Including to this, Siddarth says the objective of the restoration was to be as traditionally correct as attainable. “We wished to be one hundred percent genuine.” With heritage changing into a “buzzword”, it wasn’t unusual to listen to of historic buildings being razed in Puducherry to make method for brand-new residences. He didn’t need Gratitude Heritage to comply with go well with.
“We wished to maintain the architectural motifs intact however restore the place utilizing new supplies and methods,” he says, including that the images and decor that you simply see across the place are borrowed from one among Francois’ ancestors.
Retaining historical past intact
If these footage are supplying you with a deja vu, we’ll clarify. The facade of Gratitude Heritage was featured within the critically acclaimed movie Lifetime of Pi (2012). You may keep in mind it from there.
Elaborating on this, Siddarth says, “The director and the manufacturing group of the movie wished to shoot in Puducherry and had reached out to us. The facade options in one of many opening scenes.” He provides that the images group and cinematographer director stayed at Gratitude Heritage in the course of the filming of the film.
The homestay has seen its share of fame. In 2019, it featured in a BBC journey documentary collection ‘The Actual Marigold Resort’.
However these accolades are merely feathers in its cap. The true success lies in its restoration.
The homestay options previous wooden that was collected from houses being demolished throughout Tamil Nadu. An fascinating factor to notice is that the house options ‘Madras terracing’ — a novel type of terracing the place the artisan employs his arms and toes to assemble the bricks. With trendy methods substituting this conventional craftsmanship, sourcing artisans was a problem.
Elaborating, Siddarth says, “In Puducherry, we’ve got the vernacular Tamil fashion of structure, the Franco-Tamil fashion (that attracts closely from Chettiar fashion), after which these that are predominantly stated to be French fashion due to the arches and pillars and sure different particulars. Gratitude Heritage falls within the third class.”
Throughout the restoration course of, care was taken to not upset something of the previous residence. “No partitions have been damaged and no timber have been minimize,” Siddarth shares. He goes on to relate an anecdote of how a mango tree within the courtyard was hindering the development.
As an alternative of chopping it off, they referred to as in ‘tree docs’ who pulled the tree out of the way in which till work was full.
That includes eight double rooms and one single room, Gratitude Heritage is a spacious paradise. Nevertheless, be ready for some “quirkiness” warns Siddarth. “Every room is a distinct measurement with no consistency in any respect. The classic furnishings was sourced over a few years from houses that have been being introduced down. Each mattress, desk, and chair got here in several sizes and styles, so no two rooms are alike.”
That being stated, whether or not it’s the four-poster beds, the chequered duvets, the rocking chairs, the quaint lampshades — the whole lot is a testomony to how native craft blends with sustainability. The subject of sustainability transcends the rooms and makes its method into the practices which are adopted on the homestay.
Single-use plastic is a strict no and photo voltaic panels are the hero. Even the workers proper from the cooks to the housekeeping are from the locality. “We wished to make sure that their journey to and from residence shouldn’t be contributing to the carbon footprint,” Siddarth provides.
Though there are various moments of quiet and calm at Gratitude Heritage, there’s by no means a boring one. Evenings are a blur of exercise because the thrum of occasions, artwork workshops, and dance recitals fill the air. And one emotion that’s sure to trump the remaining is gratitude.
One of many virtues prided on by the ashram — gratitude — Siddarth says, is what introduced his mom to Puducherry and led them to the life they’ve at this time. It’s only proper that we named our dream after it too, he smiles.
However whilst we attain the top of this fascinating homestay, a query that continues to linger on my thoughts is concerning the iron protected and its contents.
Sudeep Sen’s poem does the suspense justice, saying, “Maybe, it’s best saved as a thriller, in a world the place there’s so little of it.” And, the identical emotion is apt for Gratitude Heritage too, I feel.
Edited by Pranita Bhat
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