The last mud house

There are still a few mud houses standing in this neighbourhood, all a hundred years old, some even older. But most have been painted over in recent times and they look shabby and dilapidated. It's hard even to tell they're built of mud.

The one I like has retained its mud character. It looks a bit like a squarish anthill, but one with a roof of Mangalore tiles. The reddish mud walls rise from what seems to be a tall, crumbling mound of mud. If you scrape the walls while passing, the mud crumbles. Yet the structure is sturdy and has been standing for almost a hundred years. The old man who built it is dead, but his middle-aged granddaughter lives there now with her brother and his wife.

It's a very large house, but clearly a poor man's dwelling. You climb up rough mud steps to the high veranda. The mud floor is covered with a thin paste of cow dung and feels cool under bare feet. The old wooden pillars that used to prop up the veranda roof have been replaced by pillars of the local red stone known as cheera. Inside, the house is dark. There's only a single small window with a thick horizontal plank of wood acting as a beam to support it. When I comment on the dimness, the woman explains that they couldn't put a few glass tiles in the roof to let in some light because the monkeys would break them.

She points to the pictures placed haphazardly all over the walls. We have to search for a spot where the wall won't crumble when you hammer a nail in, she explains. That is also the reason why they've not been able to put up shelves in the kitchen. The kitchen is a very long room, without a single window, running the full length of the house.

The best thing about the house seems to be that it was built practically for free. The mud was free, so were the stones, while the wood came free from one of the trees.

Why don't people live in houses like this anymore, I ask.

Nobody knows how to make them like this, she says. It's a long process with the mud.They have to soak it in water and bake it and whatnot.

It's rather sad how traditional crafts and techniques – whether it's woodwork or the treatment of mud to build houses – are all dying out in the villages. But villagers seem to have had enough of them. They love cement and concrete roofs and bright modern paints. It's only city people who romanticise things like mud homes and tile roofs.

In another mud house in the vicinity, bandicoots have tunneled into the mud foundation. Look! – the woman wails, pointing to the hole. One day the whole house is going to fall down on my head.

Dust to dust, as they say.