The houses

The tank held water for eighty years before it held anybody. The stone walls are the ones that were always here; what is new is the Mangalore tile roof over them and the single bedroom underneath. From outside it still reads as what it was.

It is small, and the listing says so first: one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, a private entrance, air conditioning for the months that need it, and a place to build a fire for the evenings that want one. There is a pond on the land, made rather than found, and the birds treat it as theirs.

The pool is where the afternoon tends to end.

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Prakruthi Nilaya sits a short walk from the tank house, on the higher ground of the same land. Two bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a balcony that runs the width of the upper floor; the terrace above it is where the evening goes.

Where the tank house is built into something old, this one is built for the view: from the terrace the farm lays itself out below, pond and pool and the tank the other house lives in, with Sarjapura's fields running out behind them.

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