A Note About Houses

As far as architectural style, there's not much variation among houses in India, at least from the point of view of someone with an untrained eye. We definitely saw some opulent homes during our travels, but the average village house is a square or rectangular concrete structure with various additions, all square or rectangular. Many of these concrete houses are unpainted, which gives them a look of being unfinished. (In fact, all of the houses in the village we visited in Rajasthan were unpainted.) Some of the houses have wooden doors, but many have no doors at all, just openings.

Abhi said that many Indians don’t trust banks and possibly have never even opened any kind of account. So after they build a house, they work on it little by little. For example, first it’s a one-story unpainted structure, then a second story is added, then it is painted, and so on. Even the couple who hosted us in Jaipur had just added a second story to their house.

Often you’ll see a heart with the date and some names painted on the front of the house. This is the wedding date of a couple who lives inside. I’m not sure how long that information is left, but all the dates I saw were from 2019, so maybe just a year. I had asked Abhi how mail is even delivered in the villages, as I never saw addresses on the houses. He said the postmen just know where the houses are by memory and experience.

Scaffolding is very rudimentary. It’s basically just tall wooden sticks (as big around as a circle made with both hands) placed all over for support. Even at the Varanasi Airport we saw this!

Abhi took us to a “modern” grocery/department store in Agra but most of the places to buy things for everyday life are merely tiny open shops a little bigger than the size of my kitchen. In front of those shops are the people selling produce and other items completely in the open. Abhi describes India as being a developing country decades behind its western counterparts, but I think it’s closer to being a century behind, at least the villages we drove through. What makes it stand out as being modern is the swath of motorbikes everywhere.

A typical village house, this one with the
marriage info painted on the side

A typical shop. This man in Khajuraho is selling
things to chew, such as paan (made with betel)
and natural gum