The Aarddamo - The Sentry of the Night.

The 'Aarddamo'
The Sentry of the Night

Most of the old houses of the middle class folks in the villages in Goa were installed with the time-proven giant wooden latch - a locking system for doors and windows, known colloquially in the Konkani language as the 'aarddamo'.

This rather unique and strong system provided a great sense of security and reliability when people retired for the night. This device was the sentry - the sentinel of the night - like a tenacious, silent and immovable guard holding the fort.

Basically, the 'aarddamo' consists of a square wooden beam provided with a knob for pulling as it is drawn across a pair of folding (double-hinged) or two single leaf wooden doors or windows by sliding it from a boxed frame pre-installed and concealed into the wall in its own dedicated casing at the time of construction of a house.

It has long been generally accepted and much spoken about as a strong means of locking or securing doors in a shut position. These have posed a real challenge - dilemma for thieves in the past to be opened from the outside.

Its appearance from the inside somehow reminded me of almost like the gates of river locks (Konk: mannos), including the wooden blocks across the doors that resembled the horizontal retaining slats holding the vertical pieces of the 'mannos'.

The installation of this type of locking system has to be thought and planned about much in advance and built in-situ at the time of construction at a height of one-third of the height of the door or window from the floor.

This system can be built only into the walls of mud-cast homes.The box for the main sliding square wooden slat is approx. 6in x 6in. x 5 ft. long. The block itself is approx 3.5 x 3.5 inches. The box enclosure for the beam is incorporated into either the left or the right side of the door or window. A square receptacle of a depth of about 6 inches for the sliders at the opposite end is also considered at the time of raising the walls.

In addition to this, metal latches are also fitted on almost all other doors and windows of houses providing light security during the day when it may be necessary to shut the doors or windows for a short period of time. With the doors and windows in the open position this old invention is completely invisible - as it remains totally recessed and concealed after it has been pushed in its own long cubicle - out of sight.

Before going to bed, it is not uncommon to hear one family member asking another whether the 'aarddamo' of the front or back door has been drawn.

"Bai, pattlo aarddamo voddlai mungo?" (Konk.) Have you drawn the block across the back-door?

I remember the time when as a young lad I stood as high as the 'aarddamo'.
Our doors and windows remained open way past the 8 o'clock church bell - call for the faithful to prayer for the souls in Purgatory, or a reminder for the tipsy one at the local taverna to return home.

Then it was time for the recitation of the family daily Rosary after which the doors and windows would be shut.  I tried to help my Mum and Dad in trying to pull out the 'aarddamo' from its casing after shutting the doors, but I could hardly pull it because it was heavy. Sometimes seasonal changes affected the sliding factor of the 'aarddamo' because of expansion and contraction. Over the years, as I grew up I found it less difficult. The ease with which I could draw out the 'aarddamo' seemed to have been directly proportional to my strength as I grew into a teenager and finally into an adult.

With the advent of modern homes built with reinforced concrete beams, columns and laterite stone walls, windows secured with iron grills and metal latches, the ancient 'aarddamo' has gradually disappeared from the scene.

GOAN ANCESTRAL HOMES

Traditional Ancestral Goan Home

(Line Artwork by Tony Fernandes)

         Old Goan homes such as the one in the drawing above were mostly built by the rich and wealthy 'battkars' (land-owners), the affluent ones who were better off by working abroad, especially in the Portuguese colonies in East Africa. These traditional houses carryied a status symbol and were based on the western designs - now commonly known as Portuguese house - with local construction ideas, materials and labour.

        The houses were erected with strong foundations of up to 4 to 5 ft deep and walls consisting of laterite stone. The walls were finished with cement-mortar course and painted white. The average plinth was 5 ft high. with long balconies and verandahs. The higher the plinth and the number of steps leading to the balcony - the higher the status of the owners!  

        Forming an integral part of these house were decorative railings with roof covered with Mangalore tiles on a strong framework consisting of longitudinal teak wood rafters and lateral red-wood ribs that were nailed to the rafters. The floor was finished in red cement and grooved impressions that suggested tiling work. These houses had ample number of windows that provided natural light during the day.The windows were works of art in themselves - an intricate pattern mastered and perfected by Goan carpenters over the centuries. It consists of vertical wooden strips into a timber framework, slotted to accept square pieces from the nacre of the mother-of-pearl shell which are inserted into a slotted timber framework.

        The doors were made of teak and fitted with heavy duty long steel latches fitted on the door frames.
        
        A compound wall around the house consisted of a broad gate with a drive way as well as a smaller gate for a single person's entry in the front. The rear of the house had a narrow gate with a latch. An out-house was constructed within the confines of the compound wall at the rear with a small opening through the rear wall.
        
        The front was quite elaborate with decorative garden and steps leading to the main door of the house and a long balcony with cement or wooden benches on both sides of the entrance.

        Apart from the imposing facade of these vintage houses, a common feature of these houses was a Holy Cross in the case of a Christian home or a Tulsi in front of a Hindu home.  

ANCESTRAL GOAN HOMES

Traditional Goan Home
Line Artwork by Tony Fernandes

Middle class homes such as the one shown above were constructed with mud bricks or manually mud-cast walls. There were then finished off with mud-slurry with trowels and painted white.

They consisted of a sitting room/prayer room (Konk. 'vosro), large hall (sala - Port.) usually with a bed at one end. Most of the houses had a bedroom behind the vosro. The bedroom had another small room (Konk. 'kudd') that served as a storage area for provisions with an attic (Konkani: 'ma-o') above it. A narrow corridor from the 'vosro' led to the kitchen with an adjacent bathing area (Konk. 'mori'). The kitchen at the rear opened into a compound wall or a fence made from bamboo poles and palm leaves. Trees such as the guava, drumstick or moringa (Konk. 'mooshing'), vegetable and other medicinal plants served as reinforcements to the fence. The roofing tiles used in these houses were semi-circular red clay tile variety. Longitudinal rafters cut out from the coconut tree served as supports, and lateral ribbing made from split bamboo poles fastened to the rafters with coir rope were used in turn to support the tiles.

These houses were built by tenants (Konkani : 'mundkari') on properties which were owned by landlords (Konkani: 'battkar'). The mundkars in return looked after the property. Some of these folks also worked for the landlords - in their houses or looked after the landlords' other properties elsewhere.

The out-house of such homes was far away - usually along the perimeter of the village wherever possible. 

The Little White House at Cumbiem Morod

         On the left-hand side of the picture of the house you can see stenciled lettering "Happy X'mas". Young boys went around the village stencilling the caption on the walls of houses in the village after the Midnight Mass.

         On the left side in the pic, on the 'sopo' is a circa 1960 model Philips radio, similar to the one in the picture below, tuned to the early morning English program of Radio Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). From the long shadows in the picture, it is evident the picture was taken very early in the morning. After listening to the BBC news relayed by Radio Ceylon, on Short Wave 31 meter band, I joined the other boys at the cross-path in the center of the village and walked to St. Anthony's High School, Monte de Guirim, Bardez, Goa, as a young lad. 

 Tilted on its stand is my 'Atlas' bicycle that my father bought for me during my mid-teens, fitted with a bell, horn, rear view mirror and a rear bracket, which I often used to carry wheat purchased from Mapusa market and later take it to the flour mill to grind it into flour. I also used it to run several errands, like fetching a doctor to the village in an emergency, to watch football matches in Duler, Mapusa, to attend Mass at St. Diogo's Church, Guirim, and to go to Calangute Beach in the months of April and May.

         On the top right of the picture a 'star' is seen and that surely indicates that the picture was taken during Yuletide. The 'star' seen in the picture was my own work of art like many other boys in the village, made of white translucent craft paper glued onto a hollow framework of bamboo sticks held apart as an expanded shape by sticks at 5 cross points. It was hauled up using a pulley and coir rope on a long bamboo pole. And at sunset it would be brought down to place and light up a candle or a lamp fitted to a thin flat piece of wood inside it and hauled back up above creating a beautiful aura of its own that said it all, along with some lanterns lit up under the roof edge of the balcão.

         The camera used to take this picture was a Japanese Model called 'Samoca', similar to the one in the picture below:

The colour slide from which the house picture has been reproduced is Kodachrome 35mm 64 ASA. The film was processed by Bombay Film Labs, and at times also done by Kodak Film Labs at Hemel Hempstead, England. I still have the 1 inch x 2 inches slide, that I used to project on the wall using a projector powered by batteries.

         Electricity first came to the village of Cumbiem Morod only around 1969.

Those were the days.

Tony Fernandes (a.k.a. Felicio)