RANVIR SHAH SPOTLIGHTS THE CHARM AND SIGNIFICANCE OF DAKSHINACHITRA, A 30-YEAR OLD MUSEUM OF SOUTH INDIAN HOMES AND MATERIAL CULTURE

You enter the Chettiar house from the portico, and are transported through the thinnai (verandah) and the deeply carved door to the threshold of a house in Chettinad.

- PHOTOS: KIRTHANA DEVDAS

The courtyard with pillars all around opens into larger rooms but while going into them, you realise that they are museum galleries. At DakshinaChitra Museum, the house museum initiated by Deborah Thiagarajan nearly 30 years ago on a sprawling estate by a beach about an hour's drive from Chennai, the houses come from different parts of South India. The museum now has 19 homes.

Each home brings with it some elements, like artefacts evoking a lifestyle that is fast fading in rural and peri-urban areas as we become increasingly more urbanised. Young students from schools and colleges, and throngs of tourists—Indian as well as those visiting from overseas—are seen at this museum at any given point of time.