Janakiamma Balija Choultry

 

While waiting in a queue early one morning outside the ration card office in Ulsoor with my husband, I noticed this beautiful, old faded house. I pulled out my sketch book and started sketching this view with the only writing tool I had at that time – a Reynolds ball point pen. I managed to do only a portion of the drawing, and when the queue moved, I had lost the view of the house. This evening my husband and I went back so that I could complete the sketch, and to our surprise found that the house was in fact, an unused wedding hall(choultry)!

The hall built in the 1930s, lies at the junction of St John’s Road and Gangadhara Chetty Road close to the RBANMS grounds. We walked around the building to find a stone plaque on the compound wall of this house that dates the Gangadhara Chetty Road to 1927. Although the choultry has been abandoned for quite some time, the ornate compound, tiled roof and beautiful monkey top remains intact, occupied by squirrels and birds. The building is much more beautiful than this sketch shows, the faded yellow of the walls and brown wood work looked gorgeous in the light of the setting sun.

The owners of this building still live in a set of small quiet houses behind it. Apparently the building land was leased by the famous Rai Bahadur Arcot Narrainswamy Mudliar (founder of RBANMS institutions) to the current owner’s grandfather, who built this building. It was initially occupied by a printing press whose name is painted on the front wall of the building –  Sundaram Press Publications, and was later converted into a wedding hall. The family hopes that the building, now a part of a trust, will be saved and used before it decays.

Advertisement