Houses in India: Haveli

Last night I started reading Losing Asia. The author gave a vivid visual description of a Chinese town. I realized although we had spent hours driving through Rajasthan's countryside and took pictures of forts, palaces, and various oddities, we had failed to take many pictures reflecting every day life. We had seen tent communities, apartment houses, and comfortable family homes. We know that people live behind or over their shops. In Jaisalmer, the smallest town we visited, we wandered through warrens of two to three storey attached homes. Yet we consistently failed to record what we were seeing.

We do have pictures of havilis.
While they are largely uninhabited they gave us a perspective on Indian life. I paid particular attention because they allowed me to visualize the Egyptian apartment depicted in Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. Havilis were merchants' homes. These havilis are in Mandawa (our bet is that entrapreneurs have promoted the town's havilis to attract tourists).









We entered two havili. In this haveli the first courtyard is largely empty; the other had small craft stalls. (Never lose an opportunity to sell something to a tourist.) The inner court yard, depicted on the right, seems to the center of family life. We climbed up to the roof; it had small living or storage areas. We had a view of the town and other families' lives. It seemed to be the Indian equivalent of apartment dwellers who use binoculars to spy on other apartments.










When I came down from the roof I mentioned the lack of privacy - a woman who was preparing the family dinner laughed and commented that in India everyone's life is an open book.