Golden Pastures

The home that Mangesh Lungare built for his parents in a remote village in Maharashtra showcases where he is from and where he is now, and, to his parents’ great surprise, features 94 light bulbs

- Tora Agarwala

The houses of Dudhalwadi are crumbling. Most are ramshackle. Some—in typical rural Indian spirit—are painted bright, like pastries you’d think twice about eating. Others have bicycles hanging nonchalantly on their walls. If this was Mumbai, this would’ve have been art. Oh yes.

But Dudhalwadi is far, far away from Mumbai in every sense of the word. It’s never made news. Perhaps it doesn’t want to. Perhaps, for the villagers, it doesn’t matter. Many things don’t in this quiet village in Maharashtra, where, when night falls, you sit under its starlit skies in the middle of a chickpea field, roasting and devouring millet from a crackling bonfire.

So, about three years ago, when large trucks reached its desolate roads, and cranes appeared carrying full-grown trees, the villagers of Dudhalwadi queued up on its many hillocks. What was happening? What were they building? A fort? A hotel? A fort hotel? You didn’t see many of these around though.

But what shook Dudhalwadi that summer was actually just a home. Though conspicuous from a distance by its slatted wooden screens and black basalt stone, the house wasn’t, by any means, an invasion—neither in its being nor in its intention. It was neither a holiday home nor a city-dweller’s summertime escape. The house wasn’t by an outsider. The house was by one of them.

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