Keya Sarkar: Our walls, their walls

For all the time that I can remember, our house in Santinketan has been given a lime wash (chunkam) every time the walls looked grubby. My father worked as a salesman for a paint company for the better part of his career and our house in Kolkata fell prey to many experiments that his company used to recommend. At times we would come back from school to see strange colours on the inside walls of our house which were bearable because they had names such as "mushroom magic" or "apple green" on the shade card!

Thankfully, my father never tried any stunts with our house in Santiniketan. I always remember the house in shades of yellow, which was achieved by staining the chuna. Inside, the walls were stark white. With large trees around, the one-storied house needed the white to bring in some brightness.

After I moved to Santiniketan, I continued with the tradition of chuna for the exterior walls but made a change for the interior. I covered the walls with a layer of gobar (cow dung) mixed with burnt straw and then did the second layer with white clay. The gobar kept the house cooler and the burnt straw provided a dark undercoat for the second layer. Also, I got the walls painted by hand (like the mud plastering done on houses in the surrounding villages) and so, the walls were a beautifully textured white with the dark underlay offering relief. When I first told my father about what I was doing, he was livid. Having dealt with synthetic paints all his life, he thought giving me the Santiniketan house was a big mistake!

Things only got worse when I tried to explain the philosophy of buying local stuff. "If we use synthetic paints, much of what we spend would go to the paint company whereas with gobar or chuna a large portion of my spend would accrue to labour," I explained. Also because lime washes do not last as long as the fashionable weather coats, one would have to get it done more often and, thus would mean more money for labour. My father failed to see why I should bring in ideology to mundane matters such as house painting and we just left it at that. Agreeing to disagree.

Last month, we had occasion to get into it again. The interiors went off without a hitch. The women who came to paint worked quietly and except for the occasional giggles, you did not realise if they were there.

Then work began on the exteriors. During one of our early morning drives past the neighbouring villages, I spotted a house in a lovely shade of ochre done in chuna. It was deeper than the colour we had on our walls and had more character. I took a photograph of the house thinking it would be easier for me to explain to the chuna contractor. He said he would be able to replicate it with a powder (called buff), mixed with lime and some synthetic red stainer.

However, despite hand mixing the lime with the stainers, the shade didn't match up to the one I wanted. So, I thought I would go to the paint shop myself and figure out how chuna shades work. When the shopkeeper realised how old school I was, he not only showed attitude but also advised me on how chuna is a bad idea because it rubs off on anybody leaning against it! I nodded realising that he stood to earn little by selling me only stainers.

I came home and supervised the mixing with renewed enthusiasm. And then, the painter who was mixing under my instructions said very condescendingly, "actually now everybody does colour mixing with the computer". So, like a lot of things, mixing by intuition will soon be a forgotten art.