The silvery gates of Starley House on Cannon Shed Road open to reveal a stately residence, untarnished in grandeur even after 80 years of being built. In its current unoccupied disposition it carries with grace the passage of time and the missing hullabaloo of generations that once lived there.
The drive-in careens around an overgrown garden with a concrete Lion Capital of Ashoka, the national emblem, in the centre. In its hey day a fountain spouted from the lion’s mouth into the pond that encircled it. Pink lotuses grew in the clear water. Today, the pond is reclaimed but two clay storks stand in the overgrown grass, a reminder of the owner’s taste for fine living.
Seventy-five-year-old Ivy Poulose who moved out of her big house two years ago for practical reasons comes over every weekend to oversee basic maintenance. “My father-in-law, Philipose Chacko built the house. He was a generous landlord and a man of fine taste. He built this house in style and lived that way,” says Ivy sitting on the porch veranda.
She came to the house as a bride in 1959, through marriage to the renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Poulose Chacko. Ivy lives the old times with happy nostalgia. “This is a lucky house. It has only seen good times- births of children, grand children and great grandchildren”.
Designed by her father-in-law along with the wisdom of carpenters, masons and artisans of the time, the house became the cynosure of all eyes. The sea stood at a distance from the house and the boat pier directly opposite its gate. Boatmen who saw the lights of the three-storied house from far called it the “nakshatra bungalow”. “That’s how the house got its name - Starley,” says Ivy.
On the 50 cents that it stands there used to be an outhouse for the managers and visitors from Cherai and Vypeen, from where the family hailed. A garage sheltering four cars stood on one side. The fin-tailed Dodge, another object of affection and pride of the owner, was the talk of its time. Besides, cars were a rarity those days, says Ivy. He would cajole her into using the Dodge for her outings. A man with a propensity for fine living Ivy’s father-in-law nurtured a rose garden with 110 varieties of the flower. He pampered Ivy by presenting her a rose everyday “to match my sari.”
Another reason that made Starley House one-of-its-kind, of the time, was in the use of mosaic flooring. “It’s the first house where mosaic was used in Kerala. It was brought from England by ship,” says Ivy. Lisa, her daughter, shows the beautifully speckled ochre and green mosaic tiles that have stood the test of time and retain their polish. The house is built with red stones, vettukkal , “huge and massive” that make Ivy still wonder about them being carted to such heights. The thick walls used a plastering of lime and sugar.
There is symmetry in the architecture of the house. The main door opens to a hall with adjacent rooms, a dining room behind followed by a kitchen and a courtyard with the borma , a room for baking. The first floor is a repeat of the ground floor.
Two staircases, an external one for guests, polished and ornate, and one inside, a more practical flight are for guests and residents respectively. The top most floor was used for drying paddy and coconut, produce from the farmlands.
The dressing rooms with bedrooms, used for oil massages and treatments for the women of the house in confinement, were busy rooms for most years till now. “Though the family children were not born here, except for my father, all the family women came here for their post-delivery recoupment,” says Lisa. She remembers grand wedding feasts, garden parties and a host of at-homes held regularly. In the early days when her grandfather held sway, he would let in tobacco merchants and other traders to spend the night on the veranda of the house. It was also the time when the cannon shed, from which the road along the house gets its name, was replete with military activities.
In its present uninhabited state, the cuckoo clock, an iron safe, glass cabinets and the sunken bath in the master bedroom are telling remains of lives well-lived.
But an image of the house that Ivy and her daughter and perhaps most family members and friends carry with satisfaction is of the day when the famous doctor who lived there and had touched the lives of people from the city passed away. As he lay in his coffin in the main hall the family exhibited his art works on the walls, beautiful, serene paintings of people in different moods, signed Thambi, which he was popularly called.
“This house is referred to as Dr. Poulose Chacko’s house,” says the elderly watchman with pride in his voice. “He is the famous personality of Starley House.”
