Ningachari the village architect and Raama the washerman

Ningachari the village architect.


Ningachari AKA Ningaji Achari was a carpenter,stonemason,iron smith and expert mason all in one.. He was not a literate. Any house built in and around his native village belonging to well to do families were built by him. If a building has been built by Ningachari it had its own extra value. The quality of workmanship was also excellent.
It appears that he never used any scale. The scale used was the length between his elbow and the tip of his middle finger, This length was used to fix the height of pillars length and width of halls, rooms doors and windows,
He would mark the length on the ground or mark on the stone and will tell his subordinates to fix the various sizes as multiplier of this.. .
None of his clients or subordinates questioned. Except for the main door which used to be about six feet in height and width of four feet other doors were of maximum height five feet and width of three feet. His reasoning was that a person should always be thinking of the supreme God and always try to bend his head.
The windows provided were above six feet from the ground level. His reasoning was that the outsiders should not see what is happening inside the house.
All the houses built by him had sufficient cross ventilation and light.
The centre of the house invariably had an open square space which was open to the sky surrounded by columns.. The rain water in this area was led to the outside by and underground drain. The total columns determined the size of the house. It may be 16 or more column house or even four column house.
When all the work was finished and handed over and when the house warming ceremony was performed he used to be honoured with shawl and one handful of betel leaves and one handful of betel nut ,coconut and sufficient honourarium.
I do not know whether any of his offsprings are into this field as Ningachari passed away long time back..



Raama the washerman.

Raama was the traditional washerman in our ancenstral village.. This tradition of father to son passing of the work was in vogue.
His grandfather shifted his household to a nearby village which ws at a higher elevation after the village was affected by floods.
Raama though he had shifted his residence he was still considered as the village washerman. He used to be given five kolagas (about 40 litres of paddy) for every member of the family furing harvest... For this he used to wsh all the clothes of the members of the family for the entire year.
There used to be no soap of deteregent during those times.
After the harvest time which usually ended by the end of January he will go with a bullock cart in search of a soil known as “Choulu Mannu”. This was a sort of red black and white coloured soil which he used to wsh the clothes.. He will make several trips and collect sufficient soil to last him for an year atleast.
The mode of washing the clothes was as follows: He will wet the clothes for an hour or so and spread them on the ground.. On this he will wet this special mud and sprinkle this mud . Then he will roll these clothes tight and keep it for an hour. Afterwards he will spread it by layers aprinkling some water for each layer of clothes over a big open mouthed mud vessel fixed over a mud choola.. He will light th choola using all waste dried cowdung and straw waste. This he will do it for an hour or so.
Later after the clothes have cooled sufficiently he will wash them in the river .
Presto all the grime and dirt have vanished like anything. He will then spread the clothes for drying and after drying these clothes he will deliver it to the concened .
He did not “Iron “ the clothes. Ony when specially requested he will do it.
His other durties for which he was given honourarium were to spread sarees or dhothies on the walk way of roads when during soe auspicious occasion some ladies used to carry water on their head from the temple to their house hold. None of the owners of the sarees or dhothies could raise objection for using their clothes for this purpose. Raama was also given honourarium for this.
On special occasions such as marriage he used to be gifted with clothes. When someone dies and before fcreamatin or nurial some communities used to dress the corpse in new clothes. This they usually used to remove before nurial or cremation and this also used to e given to Raama as it wa his right.
These Raama used to wash and sell it to used cloth dealers during weekly market..
Even though we left the village during our father’s time as a right he was given paddy though we never got anything in return.
Due to various land reform acts we sold our lands in our village long back and we had no interest in going to the village where only our ancestral dilapidated house remained..
I do not know whether this system still continues. I as sure that Raama is no more as I remember him to be old several years back when I visited our native village. ..