Verandahs and Bungalows

Legend has it that St. Thomas, the brother of Jesus Christ, came to the south-west coast of India in the first century CE and found employment as a master mason and carpenter. He is known as “Doubting Thomas” for his scepticism, refusing to believe in the resurrection of Christ until he saw the evidence for himself. Ever the troublemaker, he hesitated to go, as ordered, to spread the gospel in India until Jesus miraculously appeared and caused him to be sold as a slave to an Indian princess who happened to be visiting Jerusalem. Employed as a builder for the princess’s father, King Gundaphorus, Thomas continues to misbehave. He accepts a large sum of money from the king to build a magnificent palace but, making his late brother proud, gives it all to the poor. Using his divinely-inspired strength and wisdom, St. Thomas built the first Christian churches on the east coast of India, between Malabar and Madras. Thus, the Christians of St. Thomas were there to greet the startled Portuguese when Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498. Thomas is the patron saint of builders and Portugal.

In the hot and wet climate of the Kerala coast, we find a vernacular wooden architecture that both imported and exported design ideas.  Ocean trade brought Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus together in perfecting a house design that features a light weight, one-storey, steep-roofed, timber-framed building in a compound with a central courtyard.  Curved ridge beams and open gablets encourage air circulation. The lower part of the roof is less steep than the upper and designed to cover an open porch, the verandah (a name given by the Portuguese colonists). Foundations are a combination of stone and burnt brick. Floors, for the wealthier, are of stone and tile. The wooden frame is mostly of teakwood with some palm, jackfruit, and thatch.  Wood carving is popular, especially in public buildings, such as mosques, temples, churches, and the houses of the well-to-do.  Expensive decoration takes the form of coffered ceilings and wooden Jali screens that enclose the verandahs, windows, roof vents, and form partition walls.  The use of such latticework keeps the Kerala house private yet well ventilated and adequately lit.

The British colonial administration adopted this type of building for their offices, schools, and homes.  The name ‘bungalow’, in fact, comes from Bengal, on the east coast of India, home of a similar design which also featured the verandah.  Europeans, with their nuclear families, preferred a single-family house rather than the compound of buildings meant for the extended Indian family.  Consequently, the European bungalow was larger, with an extensive verandah on multiple sides. In the bungalow, the private courtyard becomes the semi-public veranda.