The House in Pudukkottai That Woke Up at 5AM

By 5AM, the house in Pudukkottai was already awake. The old tape recorder would be blaring Pithukuli Murugados songs somewhere inside, and above everything else you could hear the steady creak of the wooden swing moving back and forth.

My athai paati — my grandfather’s sister — would often be on that swing, singing “Gopala Krishna Swamy Gokulathiley,” a soft Krishna lullaby. She had been widowed young and lived the rest of her life in that house, and to me she always felt like someone straight out of an RK Narayan story.

For us, summer meant Pudukkottai and Gobichettipalayam. A couple of days after the final exam, we would take the overnight Trichy Express from Bangalore, then a bus onward, and by the next morning we would be inside that long, bustling house full of cousins, relatives, and noise.

Athai Paati with the kids on the swing

The house itself stretched from one street to another, a long sequence of rooms almost like a train compartment. The front door was painted green, with iron rods running top to bottom, and cement seating on either side where my thatha would spend the evenings talking to whoever passed by. People were always coming and going — children running out to the nearby playground (Thilagar Thidal) and back in for water from the cool earthen pots, relatives stepping out to the Pillaiyar temple or the Sankara Madam a few streets away.

Just inside was the large living room where we played indoor cricket. Vintage chairs and cots lined the room, and my grandfather would usually be sleeping on one of those cots, carefully tucked inside his mosquito net. That meant we had to play with extreme caution — every shot softened, every ball redirected — because one bad hit could wake him.

Beyond that was the main hall, its walls covered with framed gods and old Ravi Varma prints — and in the middle, the wooden swing. It could seat six or seven of us at once, and most afternoons it did.

A small section of the hall was open to the sky, and during the rains you could hear the water falling straight into the house, the sound echoing through the rooms.

The house would fall quiet for a short while during the afternoon siesta, and then the distant calls of the vermicelli ice-cream seller or the son papdi vendor would drift in and wake us from our sleep.

The kitchen still carried traces of the old days. I remember when we finally moved from the veragu aduppu — the wood-burning stove — to a gas stove. It was a large kitchen, and we often gathered there for meals, seated simply on the floor.

The kollai, the backyard, had a well. Many times we would draw water straight from it and pour it over our heads for a bath. My grandfather spent long hours there doing his carpentry work.

Kollai or the backyard - Mannis and Mama

There were tamarind, neem, plantain, and coconut trees all around, and right at the edge of the property stood the outdoor toilet — which meant quite a walk whenever it was needed. Near the washing area, the plantain stalks, bananas, and leaves would often be floating in the small concrete tank where we rinsed our plates after meals.

Every morning, Periyanayagi, our house help for decades, would grind fresh neem leaves, roll them into a small ball, and hand one to each of us on an empty stomach. Neem was painfully bitter, but she would insist, “This will kill all the worms in your stomach. Gulp it down with water.”

Periyanayagi with Naren

In the evenings, my paati or athai paati would sit on the swing and narrate mythological stories, and all of us cousins would listen in rapt attention.

Paati with Naren at Kumara Malai

Breakfast and lunch usually happened in the kitchen, but dinner was almost always curd rice. Paati would bring a large bowl, serve each of us, and as we ate she would retell some story from mythology. By seven the lights would be dimmed, and before long the entire house would fall silent.

I have not visited Pudukkottai in decades. The house itself was sold in the early 2000s, and the family moved to Trichy.

But in my mind, that house still wakes up at 5AM. The tape recorder is still playing. The swing is still moving. Somewhere, athai paati is still singing.

At the time, nothing about it felt temporary. It felt like that house, those summers, and that rhythm of life would always be there. Only much later did I understand how quietly such worlds can disappear.

Some homes disappear from the map. They don’t disappear from memory.

Some old photos from those Pudukkottai days