Raja's Tree

Raja and his brother live on the same street as us. Their parents are weavers who work on power looms. Typically weavers here have one or two power looms installed in their houses. It is a distributed factory setup. The woven fabric, lungis, are picked up by middlemen and sold to agents further up the chain. A vast majority of these weavers are illiterate. They get the looms installed by borrowing a big lump sum.  They make about Rs. 8000 per month for their labour.

The traditional house design for the weaving community involved one or two courtyards and rooms on the front and back of the courtyard(s). These wall to wall houses used to have a pitched roof covered with country tiles. The new settlements however are devoid of these features. The weavers live in houses built with bricks or cement blocks with an asbestos sheet roof. It seems to me that their houses are built to house the looms. There hasn’t been much thought to make the houses more livable for their human inhabitants. 

Raja’s parents moved in to this neighbourhood six years ago. They accidentally planted a Pongamia tree in front of their house. It is right next to their only water source. This tree is a part of their everyday lives as in the pictures below:

Enjoying the tree's shade with friends and relatives

Up a tree-house made with sticks

The mom washes clothes and the dishes under the tree

Putting the baby to sleep

Parking, socializing and also retiring (when they bring their cot out here)

This tree has been an indispensable extension of their house, moderating temperature even when it was blazing 110 deg hot. Really wish there were more trees in all our neighbourhoods.

-- Hema