There was a time before when everything, including homes, were built mostly from wood.
And the best wood in the country was supposed to grow in Kerala. From homes to sea faring dhows, the wood from this verdant land was considered the best of the best.
These pictures are from one among millions of ordinary homes built with wood, in Kerala, in the mid 20th Century.
The couple who built this home.
Two generations later, like a piece of driftwood that has found its way back home, a granddaughter visits the old wooden home.
In Kerala, since independence, the first thing youngsters do as soon as they finish their education is leave.
This wooden house is from a time when the people put the picture of the nation's leader on their walls.
In the old days, this was the place where coarse ash from rice bran was hung in a pot, to be used as tooth powder. It's been replaced by tooth paste and brush.
Everything was made from wood. The grills, the window panes, everything. We used up enough wood to eat up most of our forests until wood became an expensive commodity. Today, the wood for our furniture come from Malaysia and South East Asia.
We are eating up their forests now.
