Dear, all my Hive friends today I like to talk about Dakshinachitra the living museum as I promised. I hope you all will enjoy it.
DakshinaChitra is a wonderful living museum of art, architecture, lifestyles, crafts and performing arts of South India. DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum is run by the Madras Craft Foundation which is an NGO that was opened to the public in 1996. The whole museum covers around 10 acres of land.
The Museum is situated on the Bay of Bengal, at Muttukadu, twenty-five kilometers away from the main city Chennai, on the ECR road to Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India. The main mission is to preserve, exhibit and promote the heritage of art and culture of south India and to bring these arts to the public with some wonderful events, workshops, live performances, etc to engage with people and interact with them.
In the DakshinaChitra museum, you will find 18 authentic historical houses and each house has its contextual display module. All these houses bought here by their owners and Dakshinachitra reconstructed them with the original demonstration. Inside the houses, most of the design is purchased, some given by the owners and reconstructed by the local artisans who are masters of their work. The ocean is very near to the museum. You can feel the cold breeze inside and outside the museum. Dakshinachitra: The Living Museum, Chennai.
I am very fortunate that I spent 45 days at Dakshinachitra Museum and explored the whole museum. The most beautiful thing is all the workers are very hardworking and dedicated to their work. They not only love this job but also enjoy it. Adhi, Rekha mam, Gita mam, Dr. Deborah Thiagarajan the president and all others are very helpful.
Dakshinachitra is all about the art and architecture of southern India. So the uniqueness of this museum is the recreation of the living condition of the past. In this museum, there are houses of four southern states of India. They are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra.
All these houses are very nicely reconstructed and preserved. Some of these houses are very old, about 100 to 150 years old. In this museum, 74 women and 20 men are working six days a week. Don’t be surprised to see the number of women is higher than the man that means when it comes to decoration, preservation women are more productive than men.
I like to share another thing that is the whole area near the museum is very neat and clean. There is no pollution and the weather is much cooler than Chennai main city. That's why Dakshinachitra can be the best place to spend your vacation time with your family.
Tamil Nadu
In a Tamil Nadu section, you can see a merchant house, which is actually from a merchant community. It represents the ancestral homes of the Nattukottai Chettiars. Which is found scattered through the 76-80 remaining “Chettiar” villages at Ramnad,
Inside this house, you can see some very old traditional columns, a wonderful verandah. he door and inner verandah which is collected from Kandanur village. You can also see some tools, musical instruments and sitting places for family meetings, etc inside of this house.
Kerala
Syrian Christian House
This is one of the old traditional houses of Kerala. There are two sections to this type of house. They are the land section and the underground section. In the land section, people used it for their shelter. And the underground section is used for the storage of food items.
The most interesting feature of this house is its floor plan, using the entrance you can go directly into the granary. People usually do their prayer in front of the granary. Later, the expansion of this house includes a separate living room, a separate dining room, a guest house, a cow shade, a separate granary.
Thanks for reading my article. Please stay home and stay safe from Coronavirus(COVID-19).