James Holman is an extraordinary travel writer: The Briton was blind.

Nevertheless, we owe him deep insights into the life of South Asia in the first third of the 19th century.

He looked for everyday life, went into detail: Holman never saw the brilliant white of the Chunam, the lime plaster on the walls of the houses in Madras, today's Chennai, in southern India.

But he must have let his fingertips slide over the delicate, polished walls, which are reminiscent of cool marble - only they are much cheaper.

Christoph Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.

  • Follow I follow

When the brig dropped Margaret Holman in Madras in the summer of 1830, his reporter heart beat faster. On his noctograph, which for the first time also allowed the blind to take notes, he described how cotton dyed with indigo was loaded onto ships bound for Bordeaux and Senegal. He dealt with the unique building material with the same interest. Over the pages of his book he provides instructions for mixing, stirring and application. The title of his book published in 1840 shows how exactly the Briton takes it with research: "Journeys in Madras, Ceylon, Mauritius, Cormoro Islands, Zanzibar, Calcutta etc. etc.". Already on page 9 of the report about his trip to the Comoros in the summer of 1829, Holman reports on the pleasure of chewing betel: The leaves are filled with chunam made from “burnt shell limestone,which is mixed with rose water or another perfume and sometimes with saffron to make a paste to reduce the sharpness of the lime ”.

Egg white, shell lime, cane sugar and coconut shells

“Chunam” is derived from “cunnampu” or “choona”, which in Tamil or Hindi means nothing other than lime.

But the world traveler did not waste long with the chalky dessert after an evening feast.

Soon he devoted himself to the lime painting of the walls of the same name in Madras: "Madras is particularly known for two things: the fine Chunam plaster for the interior walls of a house and the Mullygatawny soup for the interior walls of the stomach."

The recipe for the white layer from South India sounds like it came from a medieval alchemist. The production of the paste is demanding, it takes experience, time and a whole range of ingredients: egg white, shell lime, cane sugar and coconut shells. In Madras, egg white, quark and the clarified Indian butter, the ghee, are added to the mixture for a total of three layers. It was probably like a cake recipe: everyone changes it slightly until it suits them. The construction workers mixed their chunam until it stuck to the wall. Finally they add water with Jagghery, the brown palm sugar, to the mass to soften it but keep it viscous, and then put a first layer about two and a half centimeters thick on the wall. Two more, thinner layers follow days later.After drying, the application was sanded with crystals or shells to give the plaster its dull sheen - so the breathable and cool wall was reminiscent of white marble, which was unaffordable. To this day, elderly Indians say that they still saw the children of the neighbors who touched the walls with their tongues at home: “She was driven by her instinct. Because of malnutrition, many suffered from calcium deficiency. The Madras-Chunam supplied them with the mineral. And it even tasted sweet. "“She drove her instinct. Because of malnutrition, many suffered from calcium deficiency. The Madras-Chunam supplied them with the mineral. And it even tasted sweet. "“She drove her instinct. Because of malnutrition, many suffered from calcium deficiency. The Madras-Chunam supplied them with the mineral. And it even tasted sweet. "

More than a century earlier, the British had submitted to Asia bit by bit. The colonial rulers also shipped captured Tamils ​​to their Singapore outposts. Today's city-state, which many consider a model metropolis, was little more than a rock protected with weapons, including a trading port and alluvial land beyond the plantations. The prisoners who were forced to work should change that. In 1845 the chronicles show 1,500 prisoners from India in the colonial city. In the heat of the equator they built administration buildings, the mansions of the colonial rulers, their churches. If they got free and got money, they built the two-story houses in their Little India district, with a shop downstairs and an apartment upstairs. Because of the many lime kilns in Little India, the dominant temple - dedicated to the destroyer Kali,called "Soonambu Kambam Kovil" in Tamil - the "temple in the lime village".