Old Indian homes were built around a repeating set of elements: a courtyard, a raised entrance seat, a deep verandah, perforated screens, oxide or handmade tile floors, a tulsi platform, a swing, woven blinds, shuttered openings and a shrine niche. Most were climate devices as much as cultural ones. Almost none of them survived the shift to the apartment floor plate.
A friend’s family sold their house in Old Jaipur in 2019. Before the handover she walked me through it, and the thing she kept returning to was not the carved door or the jharokha over the street. It was a rectangle of sky.
The courtyard was maybe four metres by five. Cracked cement, a drain in one corner, a neem tree that had outgrown its position and was pushing at the parapet. Nothing about it was beautiful. But she stood in it for a long time and said the thing everyone says: this is where everything happened.
Six months later the plot held four flats. Every one of them had a balcony. None of them had a rectangle of sky.
That is worth sitting with, because it explains the whole list below. The aangan did not fail. It was value-engineered out. A courtyard costs a builder floor area — the most expensive commodity in Indian residential construction — and returns nothing that can be printed on a brochure. The moment homes stopped being built by the families who would live in them and started being built by developers selling square feet, the courtyard was the first thing on the chopping block. Not because it stopped working. Because it stopped fitting the spreadsheet.
Here are ten of them, what each one actually did, and what happens if you want it back.
1. The courtyard — aangan, chowk, nadumuttam, muttam
A courtyard is an open-to-sky space enclosed by the rooms of a house. In North India it is usually called an aangan or, in Rajasthani havelis, a chowk; in Kerala’s nalukettu houses the central courtyard is the nadumuttam, around which four halls are arranged. It functioned simultaneously as a light well, a ventilation stack, a work surface and the household’s main social room.
What it did was more than any single one of those things. Air heated during the day rose out of the courtyard and pulled cooler air through the surrounding rooms — the same stack effect that makes a chimney draw. Wet clothes dried there. Grain was cleaned there. Weddings happened there. In Kerala, the nalukettu’s four blocks — vadakkini, thekkini, kizhakkini, padinjattini — took their names from the compass directions they faced, and the nadumuttam sat at the middle of all four. Larger families built the ettukettu, eight halls and two courtyards, and the rare pathinarukettu with sixteen halls and four.
Why it went: floor-area ratio. An open courtyard is buildable area you have chosen not to build on. In a multi-storey block it is also structurally awkward and a waterproofing liability.
How it comes back: rarely at full size. But a double-height cut-out, a light well over a stairwell, or a genuinely open-to-sky terrace court does part of the job. Architects in Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been rebuilding courtyards into contemporary plots for two decades; the constraint is plot size, not appetite.
2. The thinnai — the seat before the house
A thinnai is a raised masonry platform at the entrance of a house, most strongly associated with Tamil vernacular architecture and Chettinad mansions. Gujarat’s equivalent is the otla; Maharashtra has the pyol or katta. It gave visitors a place to sit and be received without entering the house.
This is the element that quietly disappeared and took a whole social protocol with it. The thinnai was a threshold with a function: the postman sat on it, the travelling trader slept on it, neighbours talked from it, and the household could be sociable without being invaded. It solved a problem modern homes solve badly — how to be available to people you do not want inside your living room.
In Chettinad, the thinnai sat under a deep overhang at the front of houses whose scale still surprises people. Those merchant families imported Burma teak, Italian marble and Belgian glass, and set them alongside Athangudi tiles made a few kilometres away.
Why it went: the compound wall and the gate replaced it. Once security became the organising idea of the Indian street frontage, a seat that invited strangers to linger read as a liability.
How it comes back: as a bench. A carved or plain seat immediately inside a gate, at the lift lobby, or on a ground-floor verandah recovers most of the function. It is one of the easiest of these ten to reintroduce and one of the least attempted.
3. The verandah — osari, jagli, thottam, chajja
A verandah is a roofed, open-sided space running along one or more faces of a house. In Indian construction it did shading work first and social work second: a deep overhang keeps direct sun off the wall behind it, which is the single cheapest way to reduce heat gain.
The depth was the point. A one-metre verandah is decoration. A two-and-a-half-metre verandah in Chennai keeps the wall behind it in shade for most of the day, and a shaded wall does not radiate heat into the room at nine at night. The verandah also created a graded transition — bright outside, dim verandah, dark interior — which is why stepping into an old house feels like a temperature drop before it actually is one.
Why it went: balconies got enclosed. Developers found that verandah depth was better sold as carpet area, and buyers, reasonably enough, wanted the extra room.
How it comes back: as a deep balcony that stays open, an overhang or chajja above windows, or an external louvre. If you are renovating and can only do one thing on this list, shade your west-facing glass.
4. The jaali — the wall you can see through
A jaali is a perforated screen, usually of carved stone or wood, that admits light and air while blocking direct sun and sightlines. Its geometry is doing thermodynamic work: small openings accelerate air passing through them, and the depth of the screen shades the aperture.
The famous example is the stone tracery of the Sidi Saiyyed mosque in Ahmedabad, built in the 1570s under the Gujarat Sultanate, whose tree-and-palm jaali is now the emblem of the city and the logo of IIM Ahmedabad. Mughal builders took the form into marble and made it thinner and more precise; Rajasthani sandstone jaalis in Jaisalmer and Jaipur went the other way, deeper and heavier.
It also did social work that is worth naming honestly. Jaalis let women of the household see the street without being seen from it. That was a real function of purdah, and describing the screen only as a cooling device edits out why so many of them exist.
Why it went: cheap glass and mechanical cooling. A jaali is an aperture you cannot seal, and sealed buildings are what air conditioning requires.
How it comes back: as a partition rather than an envelope. A carved jaali between a living room and a stair, as a balcony railing, or as a sliding screen in front of glazing gets the light quality without the sealing problem.
5. Red oxide and handmade tile floors
Red oxide flooring is a cement-based floor pigmented with iron oxide, hand-trowelled and polished in situ to a seamless, slightly warm-toned surface. It was standard across South and West India through most of the twentieth century, and it is genuinely cooler underfoot than vitrified tile because of its thermal mass and lack of joints.
Ask anyone over forty-five who grew up with one and you will get the same sentence: nothing has felt that cool since. The physics is unremarkable — a thick, dense, continuous slab in contact with the ground stays closer to ground temperature — but the sensory memory is unusually strong, which is why this element comes up in comment threads more than any other.
Alongside it sat the handmade tile traditions: Athangudi tiles from the village of that name near Karaikudi, made by pouring coloured cement slurry into a brass stencil laid on a sheet of local glass, then curing in water. The glass gives them their particular sheen. They are still made the same way.
Why it went: labour and time. Oxide flooring is a skilled wet trade that takes days and cannot be rushed; vitrified tile is laid in hours by a two-man crew and does not craze. Oxide floors also crack, and repairing them invisibly is close to impossible.
How it comes back: it already is. Oxide has had a genuine revival in architect-designed Indian houses since roughly the mid-2010s. Be clear-eyed about it: it is expensive now precisely because the tradesmen who do it well are scarce, and it will hairline-crack.
6. The tulsi chaura
A tulsi chaura — also called tulsi vrindavan, tulsi katte or tulsi math depending on the region — is a raised masonry planter built to hold a single holy basil plant (Ocimum tenuiflorum), usually placed in the courtyard or immediately outside the main door. It is a shrine, not a pot.
Its position was deliberate. Placed in the courtyard, it sat at the point the whole house looked onto; placed at the threshold, it was the first thing encountered on entering. Watering it was a daily act with a fixed time, usually morning, and often the first structured thing a household did.
Why it went: the courtyard went, and there was nowhere to put it. Also, honestly: the domestic ritual calendar loosened in a lot of urban families.
How it comes back: as a built planter rather than a pot on the floor — on a balcony, at a terrace corner, at the entry. The distinction matters. A tulsi in a plastic nursery pot reads as a plant; a tulsi on a built platform reads as what it was.
7. The swing — oonjal, uyyala, jhula, hindolo
A ceiling- or frame-suspended wooden swing, hung indoors in the hall or on a verandah. Tamil oonjal, Telugu uyyala, Hindi jhula or jhoola, Gujarati hindolo — the Sanskrit hindola simply means a swing or swinging cradle.
Nobody sat on it alone. That was more or less the point. The swing was a social object: two or three people at a time, grandparents holding court in the afternoon, an infant rocked on it, children waiting a turn. It also appears in ritual — the oonjal ceremony in Tamil weddings, and Jhulan Purnima in Shravana, when images of Radha and Krishna are placed on decorated swings across Mathura, Vrindavan and Mayapur for thirteen days.
Why it went: ceiling structure. A swing needs a beam or slab capable of taking a dynamic load, and modern flat slabs are designed for static ones. Retrofitting hooks into an existing RCC slab needs checking, not guessing.
How it comes back: either a properly engineered ceiling fixing, or a self-supporting frame swing that transfers load to the floor. The frame version is the honest answer for most apartments.
We wrote about the swing’s regional variants and rituals in more depth in Oonjal, Uyyala, Jhoola: One Swing, Many Names, and about choosing one in The Heritage Jhula: India’s Most Beloved Statement Piece.
8. Chik blinds and khus tatti
A chik is a rolled blind of split bamboo or reed hung outside a window or verandah opening. A khus tatti is a screen of woven vetiver root, wetted through the summer so that evaporation cools the air passing through it.
These two are the most underrated items here because they are cheap and they work. A chik hung outside the glass intercepts solar radiation before it enters the room — which is why external shading beats any internal curtain, regardless of how heavy the curtain is. The khus tatti is straightforward evaporative cooling, effective in dry heat and useless in humidity, which is exactly why it belongs to Rajasthan and the Deccan and not to Kerala.
Why they went: they look temporary, they need replacing every few seasons, and air conditioning made them feel like a compromise.
How they come back: unchanged. Chiks are still made and still cost very little. If you have a west-facing balcony, this is the highest-return item on this list.
9. Shuttered openings and the jharokha
Traditional Indian window openings were usually layered: a solid wooden shutter, an inner grille or jaali, and often a mesh, each operable separately. A jharokha is a projecting enclosed balcony window, characteristic of Rajasthani and Mughal architecture, supported on brackets and overhanging the street.
The layering is the intelligent part. Three separate controls let a household choose air without light, light without air, view without exposure, or full closure — a range no single glass casement offers. In the afternoon you closed the timber and kept the grille open; the room went dark and stayed ventilated. This is the specific thing that modern windows lost, and most people can name the loss without being able to name the mechanism.
The jharokha did something different: it pushed a seat out into the moving air above the street, gave shade to the façade below, and let the household watch a procession without joining it.
Why it went: single-glazed aluminium and UPVC casements are cheaper, seal better and need no maintenance. And once you seal a building for air conditioning, the layered system is redundant.
How it comes back: internal shutters. A set of solid timber shutters inside an existing window, hung to fold back, restores the whole afternoon-darkness function without touching the façade.
10. The shrine niche — devara kone, puja ghar, mandapam
A built recess or dedicated small room for the household shrine, ranging from a carved niche in a wall to a separate room with its own door. In Kannada households it is the devara kone; the Tamil equivalent sits in the north-east corner of the house.
The orientation was rule-bound rather than casual — north-east is the prescribed direction in most vastu traditions — which is why so many old plans have a specific, otherwise inexplicable corner. In carved-wood households the shrine was often the single most elaborate joinery in the house, more worked than the main door.
Why it went: apartment plans that have no spare corner, and the arrival of the freestanding mandir cabinet as a furniture category.
How it comes back: as a niche cut into a wall rather than a cabinet placed against it. The difference between a shrine that is part of the building and one that is parked in front of it is more noticeable than it sounds.
The whole list, at a glance
| Element | Regional names | What it actually did | Modern equivalent | Works in a flat? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Courtyard | aangan, chowk, nadumuttam, muttam | Light well, ventilation stack, work and social space | Double-height cut-out, open terrace court | Rarely, at reduced size |
| Entrance platform | thinnai, otla, pyol, katta | Receive visitors without admitting them | Entry bench, lobby seat | Yes |
| Verandah | osari, jagli, chajja | Shade the wall, buffer the interior | Deep open balcony, overhang, louvre | Yes |
| Perforated screen | jaali, jali | Light and air without direct sun or sightlines | Internal jaali partition, screened railing | Yes |
| Oxide / tile floor | red oxide, Athangudi tiles | Thermal mass, seamless cool surface | In-situ oxide, handmade tile | Yes, with tolerance for cracking |
| Basil platform | tulsi chaura, tulsi vrindavan, tulsi katte | Daily ritual anchor at courtyard or threshold | Built planter at entry or terrace | Yes |
| Swing | oonjal, uyyala, jhula, hindolo | Shared seating, ritual object, slow afternoons | Frame swing or engineered ceiling fixing | Yes, with load checking |
| Woven blinds | chik, khus tatti | External shading; evaporative cooling in dry heat | Same, unchanged | Yes |
| Layered openings | shutter + grille + jharokha | Independent control of light, air and view | Internal timber shutters | Yes |
| Shrine niche | devara kone, puja ghar | Fixed, oriented place for daily worship | Built wall niche | Yes |
What actually changed — and what didn’t
It would be easy to write this as decline, and that would be wrong in ways worth stating plainly.
Most of these houses were owned by people who could afford them. The Chettinad mansion with the Burma teak and the Athangudi floor belonged to a merchant family; the tenement across the road had none of it. Courtyard houses on large plots were a rural and small-town luxury that a city of 20 million cannot reproduce, and pretending otherwise is nostalgia doing arithmetic badly. Several of these elements also carried real burdens: an oxide floor that cracks, a courtyard that floods, a jaali you cannot clean, a purdah screen whose purpose was restricting women’s visibility.
The defensible claim is narrower. These were solutions to problems that still exist. Indian summers did not get milder. The need to shade a west wall, to move air without a motor, to receive a visitor without opening your home, to give a household a fixed daily anchor — none of that went away. What went away was a set of building conventions that answered those needs by default, and we have not replaced them with anything except electricity.
Air conditioning is not the villain here. It is a legitimate and often necessary technology. But it became a substitute for design rather than a supplement to it, and the result is a housing stock that is uninhabitable the moment the power fails.
The Folklorei view
The most useful thing on this list is not any single element. It is the habit of mind behind them: build the response to the climate into the building, and let the decoration follow from the function rather than sit on top of it. A jaali is beautiful because it is doing something. A verandah is generous because it is deep enough to work.
That is also the standard we hold our own pieces to. When Wasim Ahmad — who has carved in Jaipur for four decades and whose woodwork travels inside the Palace on Wheels — says he reads the grain before he draws the design, he is describing the same order of operations. Material first, then form, then ornament.
My friend’s rectangle of sky is four flats now. That is not a tragedy; people needed somewhere to live. But somebody, in some one of those four flats, will hang a chik on a west-facing balcony this April and find the room three degrees cooler, and will not know they have just recovered a two-hundred-year-old idea.
Which one do you remember from your grandparents’ house? We are building the next several of these articles out of the answers.
Frequently asked questions
What is an aangan in an Indian home?
An aangan is an open-to-sky courtyard enclosed by the rooms of a house, common in North Indian and Rajasthani domestic architecture. It served as a light well, a ventilation stack, a work area for household tasks and the main social space of the home.
Can you still build a house with a courtyard in India?
Yes, on an independent plot — courtyard houses are being built regularly by architects in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The limits are plot size and floor-area ratio: a courtyard consumes buildable area, which is why it is uncommon in high-density developments and almost absent from apartment blocks.
Why did builders stop making aangans?
Primarily economics. A courtyard is floor area a developer cannot sell, and it adds structural and waterproofing complexity in multi-storey construction. It disappeared when houses stopped being commissioned by the families living in them.
What is a thinnai?
A thinnai is a raised platform at the entrance of a house, characteristic of Tamil vernacular architecture and Chettinad mansions. It let a household receive visitors, traders and neighbours without bringing them inside. Gujarat’s otla and Maharashtra’s pyol serve the same purpose.
Is red oxide flooring cooler than tiles?
Generally yes, for two reasons: it is a thick, dense, continuous slab with high thermal mass in contact with the structure below, and it has no grout joints. It is also more expensive than vitrified tile today and will develop hairline cracks over time.
What is the difference between a jaali and a jharokha?
A jaali is a perforated screen — a flat, pierced panel of stone or wood. A jharokha is a projecting enclosed balcony window supported on brackets. A jharokha very often contains jaali panels, but the two are not the same element.
Can I hang a traditional swing in an apartment?
Only after checking the slab. Suspended swings apply dynamic loads that standard flat slabs are not designed for, and ceiling hooks should be specified by a structural engineer rather than a carpenter. A self-supporting frame swing avoids the issue entirely by transferring load to the floor.
What is a tulsi chaura for?
It is a built masonry platform holding a single holy basil plant, placed in the courtyard or at the threshold as a household shrine. The daily watering of the tulsi was a fixed ritual in many Hindu households, and the raised platform marks the plant as a shrine rather than ornamental planting.