Barsati juta

The Barsati, a small rooftop abode, is a characteristic feature of residential architecture in Delhi from an older period. The word Barsati comes from the Hindi word Barsat, meaning rain & refers to a room built on the roof of a house that covers approximately a third of the total floor area. Typically used as a store room or as living quarters for domestic help, the Barsati is from a period when the Delhi skyline was low lying and open spaces aplenty. Back then it was also an affordable rental housing option for young professionals, artists and intellectuals. The past decade however, has brought a change in planning laws resulting in older houses giving way to apartments and taking with them the Barsati. On my first job in Delhi, whilst searching for a house to rent, I remember seeing several Barsatis, each one more unique than the other, every one of them offering innumerable design possibilities. Many of the Barsatis I was shown, touched the tops of Gulmohar, Mango, Jamun or Neem trees, were filled with plants and had the odd charpoy, swing or mooda placed to soak in the winter sun. They took one back to a time when it was common to live a more natural lifestyle and also safe to sleep on the terrace in the summer. Recently on a studio hunt, I found to my dismay that many of the characterful older houses I’d once seen had been converted into repetitive apartment blocks built wall to wall. Of the older houses that still had Barsatis, many were converted into trendy design...

Ruchika Mehra, 24, a news researcher, recalls hearing her mother, Aradhana Mehra, 49, speak fondly about the barsati she had rented in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar way back in 1997. Her nostalgic stories painted pictures of barbecue nights, jam sessions, and early morning chai on the terrace. The two-room set was just right for someone starting out in life and single in the city, as Ms. Ruchika was, in an architecture firm. It worked from both an economic and strategic perspective: people could stay in a tony south Delhi neighbourhood at a pocket-permitting rent. But when Ms. Ruchika herself moved from Lucknow to Delhi in November 2022, she found that renting one was now either a luxury or a liability, as barsatis themselves were. They were either too expensive, with rents touching Rs 80,000 or they were affordable at about Rs 10,000, but with seepage, cockroaches, and dodgy house owners. “Twenty years ago, we would deal in 20 to 30 barsatis a year; now we find five or six,” says Siddharth Gargi, a real estate agent in Nizamuddin East, a stone’s throw away from the 16th century Humayun’s Tomb, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The word barsati which borrows from the Urdu word barsat (heavy rain), is a room built on the terrace of an independent bungalow. “ Barsatis occupied almost a third of the terrace. They started out as rooms for storage and sometimes as quarters for help,” says Ranjan Choubey, a real estate agent with about 30 years of experience, working out of Jangpura, an ar...

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In a post-Independence India, Delhi's barsatis evolved as a charming example of Indian jugaad where residents turned the small rooftop space on the city's low rise buildings into a full-fledged dwelling. Open to the elements, these homes—essentially small apartments with large terraces—once offered affordable housing in the middle of the city. But with the gentrification of small neighbourhoods and increased construction of high-rises, the much romanticized Delhi barsati is rapidly disappearing. So, when an expat friend decided to make one his home, interior designer Shivani Dogra took it as an opportunity to revive its “distinctive laid-back charm and natural style”. Warli paintings, sourced during the client's travels, frame the dining area The challenge here was to open up the 1,000-square-foot space and create a modern dwelling that paid homage to its heritage. “This barsati, a remnant of an older, slower Delhi, stimulated the imagination and it was a joy to work with the history, natural light and charm of the existing space. I sought to amplify the good that it contained and tinker minimally with the existing structure and style,” Dogra explains. Delhi Barsati: Maximising Space Vestiges of the original structure remain in the form of the wall lights, ceiling and Kota stone flooring. The rest of the home was opened up with prudent design interventions. The wrought iron grills that shielded the large windows in the living room were removed to allow for an unobstructed ...

• Through a check dam and reservoir across the dry bed of a ' barsati' (rain-fed) river, the village has succeeded in raising the water table from 90 feet to 45 feet in just 10 years. • The group's ideological hangout was a barsati near the campus where a lecturer at the university's Psychology department stayed. • Her dress consisted of an old _ barsati_, dirtier even than her maid's. • I then told him to settle with the chief himself, and give me the account, which amounted to three barsati, two sahari, and three yards merikani; but the donkeys were never alluded to. • I motioned him to take my chair, which, after he sat down upon it, I was very sorry for, as he stained the seat all black with the running colour of one of the new barsati cloths he had got from me, which, to improve its appearance, he had saturated with stinking butter, and had tied round his loins. • Beluches and pagazis, to explain away the reason of my having left his house so rudely, and to tender apologies, which were accompanied, as an earnest of good-will, with a large hongo, consisting of one barsati, one dhoti merikani, and one gora kiniki, as also an intimation that I would pay him a visit the next day. • The dress she wore consisted of an old barsati, presented by some Arab merchant, and was if anything dirtier than her maid's attire. • Baraka, in the same way as I did at M'yonga's, directing that it should be limited to the small sum of one barsati and four yards kiniki. • I gave in return for...