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Ecological sensitivity combined with die hard
frugality and a flare for style:
Ecstasy from railway sleepers
by Aditha Dissanayake
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Architect Kapila Sugathadasa
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Agrey yoke, weather beaten and old, hangs at the entrance, barely
touching the visitor's head.... with the missing sokada yet to be
brought back from Nilgala. From a jack fruit tree in the corner of the
sitting room hangs an unripe fruit left to ripen (varaka venakan), in
the days to come.
A replica of the flag used at the Uva-wellassa battle hangs on a wall
made from discarded cabok ,.... The result - a sense of serenity and
wonder which hangs throughout the surroundings, as the hostess, Namali
invites you to "sit somewhere" , (kohe hari indaganna in the absence of
chairs) while she does the week's iorning on the verandha and the host,
Professor Sarath Kotagama, just back from a day's work at the University
of Colombo, lets his hair down, and joins the conversation.
Bliss can be defined in many ways. To me, bliss is enjoying a cup of
tea seated at a table made from a discarded drum wheel, once the
property of the Ceylon Electricity Board, with a serene miniature statue
of the Buddha gazing at me from the other end of the garden, or sitting
on the lanu anda listening to the professor as he narrates the story of
his house, built with refuse ("okkoma recycle badu" ) with a smile on
his face.
A smile, which, however, would go undetected because, in this house
of refuse, the interior is dark, dark, dark. Adhering to the ways of our
ancestors who, as the Architect Kapila Sugathadasa explains, built their
houses with small dark rooms, the living area of the Professor's house
too, gets no direct sunlight.
"No sunlight means no glare and no heat which in turn means there is
no need for curtains". Explains Kapila.
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Prof. Sarath Kotagama with the fifty-six year old koraha |
No curtains, no chairs, no plaster on the walls, no panes on the
windows and no fans or air conditioners because the house 'catches the
air draft' - here is a style of living stripped to the bare essentials.
A place where environmentalists will find utopia, the Professor says
70% to 80% of the material in his house is what others have thrown away.
"I have added another r to the three rs - refuse, reduce, recycle,
reuse, because someone has to refuse first for us to reuse the
material".
Most of the bricks, the coconut rafters on the roof, the tiles in the
bathrooms are the refuse of someone else's house. Not only does this
save earth's dwindling resources, but money as well. The entire cost for
the house was Rs. 1.7 million (in 1997). "The cost of a cabok at the
time was Rs.16. I bought what was removed from old houses for Rs.6.00"
recalls Prof. Kotagama.
Then comes the all transcending smile, brightening the semi-dark room
"But it's not easy to find a house builder (Bass) willing to work with
material bought from old houses.
Most of them refused to work with me saying the bad omens (vas dos )
attached to those houses will move into the new house too". He had
finally managed to convince one Bass by saying "I'm the one who will be
living in the house. Not you. So don't worry", a Bass who had turned out
to be obliging to a fault.
Though superstition is something the professor shrugs off as bunkum
(it does not bother him that the number of his house is 13/13 because he
sees it simply as an identification mark)in order to please his Bass he
had gone to a priest to find an auspicious time to start building the
house.
The priest had refused to state a time for the bahirava pooja because
the land was triangular. It was only after the professor had persuaded
the priest that he would make the triangular land into a rectangle by
having a gate in one corner of the land that the priest had obliged.
From this gate made out of discarded packing boxes, obtained, again
from the Ceylon Electricity Board to the railway sleepers used as
pillars, the flower vases turned into lampshades, the koraha in which
the Professor had his first bath, now a sink in the dining area, the cot
used by the two children turned into a sofa, here are evidence of how
creativity has been pushed to the limits to give a home to things which
would otherwise have ended as garbage.
Though Namali, (tongue in cheek) says people mistakenly think their
home is a pottery workshop, (mati vadapolak ) the house is a symbol of
ecological sensitivity worth emulating.
Interested in saving earth's resources? Build a house like Professor
Kotagama's. For, here is one way in which you can be the change you want
to see in the world.
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