The open ground along the front of the house is clean, and free from grass and weeds, and is swept every morning. In this space, called the miḍula, there is a stand of peeled sticks supported on thin posts, and having a stick platform about four feet, or a little more, in length and two feet in width, raised three feet from the ground, with often another similar platform below it. On these are laid, after being washed, the blackened earthenware cooking pots of the house, and spoons made of segments of coconut shell with long wooden handles, which are used with them.
In the little kitchen at the end of the house, with a lean-to roof, the hearths or fire-places called lipa are formed of three round stones fixed on the ground, about eight inches apart, on which are set the cooking pots, over a fire of dry sticks. Sometimes a separate small shed is built as a kitchen, but often the cooking is done inside the single apartment of the house, at one end of it.
In each garden are a number of Coconut trees, some thin Halmilla trees, and often a Mango tree, or a dark-leaved Jak tree, with its enormous light green fruit hanging on pedicles from the trunk or larger branches, as well as a Lime tree, and four or five clumps of Plantain stems nearer the dwelling. Round the base of one or two of the Coconuts or Halmilla trees are piled on end long bundles of firewood, nearly two feet thick and six or eight feet long, the unconsumed sticks from the chēna, collected by the women, tied round with creepers, and carried home on their heads. Climbing up a small tree in front of the house is a fine Betel vine, which is watered every day during the dry weather. We notice that a bleached skull of a bull is fixed among the leaves to guard the creeper from the unlucky glance of the “Evil Eye,” which might cause its premature decay. In the damper ground adjoining the rice field a few slender Areka palms are growing, with their clusters of small fruit hanging below their leafy crowns.
On the outer side of the village, near the embankment of the tank, there are the large, rough-stemmed Tamarind trees that we noticed as we came. A number of separate thin posts are fixed in the bare ground below them, to which are tethered a few small Buffalo calves, which will be joined by their mothers at dusk, after their bath in the tank is finished.
Further on, there is a small enclosure protected by a stick fence, round which a few thorns are placed. At the entrance, the halves of a split log, about nine inches wide, form gate posts; and five moveable horizontal bars pass easily through holes cut through them, a few loose thorns being rolled against them when the enclosure is shut up at night. This is a cattle-fold, or gāla, into which the little harmless black humped cattle are driven each evening by some boys, with the repeated long-drawn cry, Gālē, “Into the fold.” In some districts tobacco or chillies will be planted on this well-manured plot of ground in the following spring, a new cattle fold being then made.
On our return to the shed we see that our host’s wife has cooked his evening meal of boiled rice and vegetable curry, with a bit of sun-dried fish as a flavouring, these last being often made burning hot with red chillies. She serves it in the raised veranda to him and a relative who has come from a distant village, after giving them water for rinsing out their mouths. Both sit or “squat” on their heels, and convey the food to their mouths with their right hands, out of the shallow, rather wide basins that act as plates. Where the supply of such household articles runs short, leaf plates made of a piece of plantain leaf, or two or three halmilla leaves pinned together, are used. When they have finished the meal, and have rinsed their right hands and drunk water—which is never taken while eating—and have been served with a chew of betel leaf and its accompaniments, the wife eats the remains of the meal alone, inside the house. If she and her husband were alone they would take it together, the husband being first served.
The men now sit on mats spread in the narrow veranda, where a little oil lamp is perhaps hung, and the woman, after throwing out the remains of the food for the dog, and washing the basins and cooking utensils, and arranging them on their stand, joins the party, and shares in the evening’s conversation. Sometimes, however, she finds it necessary to pound some paddy until bed-time, in order to remove the husk, in readiness for the meals of the following day; or millet or rice may require grinding into flour in the stone quern.
If some intimate village friends were there, this would be the time when, after discussing the events of the day, or making arrangements for the morrow, a member of the party might finish the evening’s chat by relating one of the familiar old stories of which translations appear in this book.
In the end the woman retires, the visitor stretches himself on his grass mat in the veranda, and the host extinguishes the lamp, if one had been lit, and enters the single room of his house. On the next night it will be his turn to occupy the watch-hut at the chena, where his partner is sitting now.
All take care to lie, if possible, in an east and west direction, and on no account with their heads to the south. This is the abode of Yama, the god of death, while the north is the quarter inhabited by demons. These directions are therefore exposed to evil influences which might affect the sleeper, and perhaps cause such unlucky omens as evil dreams.