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Home 14
Mandla, Madhya pradesh
Mandla location map

Most of the houses in the village were built along similar lines: rooms grouped around a square central courtyard. One of the rooms was usually a kitchen with shelves made from mud and another side of the square housed cattle. The walls of all the houses in the village made from mud and wood were painted a cool white and blue. These walls were thick and made from naturally insulating materials.

When we first saw him, R was lying on his cot just inside the front door and four or five children lay watching a Bollywood film on a mat on the floor by him. A table-fan sat fanning the entire group.

R’s son soon awoke from his siesta and told us about his four children, his daughter attends university in a nearby city and only two children stay at home. R and his family owned patches of land in and around the village, and thanks to the governmental housing scheme, R’s son was planning on building a permanent extension to their mud house, and a permanent house for R.

Most houses in the village follow a similar architecture: a square of rooms around a central courtyard. The blue tempera paint on their walls seems surprising at first—why would everyone paint their walls the same color?—but makes complete sense when you step into a house to escape the blazing sun. The water situation this year is especially bad, not enough to even bathe cattle, but the long stretches of blue impart an underwater feeling, especially felt and appreciated when one is dehydrated.