These smaller city sounds. The bird song piercing the heavy lime and dhoop scented early mornings, the sound of the milkman on his cycle, some chai brewed with mint leaves that are grown on their terrace. These are to be found in the city as well, but that is an active seeking. Here, it comes to you on its own, like a wild animal which has decided to approach your vicinity after having decided you mean no harm, you're safe. I write, undeterred by conversation humming around me, in a quiet nook of the garden.
Surya uncle shows us his new office space that they're building on a plot of land in the same tiny colony they're now living in. While listening to different people talk about their professions, it's their casual, off-handed knowledge that I love the most, coming in and mopping up after them like bread to pasta gravy. So I learn that this office space is being made completely devoid of cement. The bricks are made of limestone and brick dust, and the binding between the bricks is chuna, not cement.
"Is it as good as cement?" Amma asks him from the car's back seat. "Hmm?" he asks, distracted by some detail that is blind to us, I imagine, in the construction of his office, "oh, it's better! Limestone gains strength over time, right. It becomes stone."
Back at home that night, he takes us around the house, showing us the rainwater harvesting tank on the terrace, the tiny terrace garden growing spinach, mint, coriander, brinjals on the third floor, the air chutes that bring cool outside air and the scent of jasmine and lemon grass permeating everything. He explains how the house doesn't get hot even without an A.C or in peak summer. "It's because when we say it's hot inside the house, what we really mean is the building is hot. It's the building that retains heat. With this garden, the top of the house has a cover of soil, and the rainwater tank, the solar panels and wind-catchers also add to that. That's the whole thing isn't it? When we switch on A.Cs, the A.C is cooling the building, it's making the walls give off their heat, but it feels like it's cooling us. When you build a house that doesn't latch onto heat, you don't need A.Cs at all".
The office is going to use the same minimal carbon footprint method that this house has. Natural air-conditioning, rainwater harvesting, no cement, their own terrace garden (which is by the way, tended by them, there is no maali here, they fight ignorance at a discipline by teaching themselves it). As we drive off from the construction site, the office behind us soon becoming a speck, he mentions, "Apart from the municipal water connection, we're trying to think of ways with this office of going completely off the grid."
Surya uncle shows us his new office space that they're building on a plot of land in the same tiny colony they're now living in. While listening to different people talk about their professions, it's their casual, off-handed knowledge that I love the most, coming in and mopping up after them like bread to pasta gravy. So I learn that this office space is being made completely devoid of cement. The bricks are made of limestone and brick dust, and the binding between the bricks is chuna, not cement.
"Is it as good as cement?" Amma asks him from the car's back seat. "Hmm?" he asks, distracted by some detail that is blind to us, I imagine, in the construction of his office, "oh, it's better! Limestone gains strength over time, right. It becomes stone."
Back at home that night, he takes us around the house, showing us the rainwater harvesting tank on the terrace, the tiny terrace garden growing spinach, mint, coriander, brinjals on the third floor, the air chutes that bring cool outside air and the scent of jasmine and lemon grass permeating everything. He explains how the house doesn't get hot even without an A.C or in peak summer. "It's because when we say it's hot inside the house, what we really mean is the building is hot. It's the building that retains heat. With this garden, the top of the house has a cover of soil, and the rainwater tank, the solar panels and wind-catchers also add to that. That's the whole thing isn't it? When we switch on A.Cs, the A.C is cooling the building, it's making the walls give off their heat, but it feels like it's cooling us. When you build a house that doesn't latch onto heat, you don't need A.Cs at all".
The office is going to use the same minimal carbon footprint method that this house has. Natural air-conditioning, rainwater harvesting, no cement, their own terrace garden (which is by the way, tended by them, there is no maali here, they fight ignorance at a discipline by teaching themselves it). As we drive off from the construction site, the office behind us soon becoming a speck, he mentions, "Apart from the municipal water connection, we're trying to think of ways with this office of going completely off the grid."
No comments:
Post a Comment