Chawls

The chawl (from Marathi चाळ, chāḷ) is a name for a type of residential building found in India. Typically, housing units in chawls are availed of by relatively poor but gainfully employed working-class families. Chawls were constructed in abundance during the early 1900s, in the textile mill areas of Mumbai, and indeed this is how they originated, to provide cost-effective housing to mill-workers in Mumbai. They were later built by working-class emigrants working in other manufacturing industries also. This type of housing is no longer built, but remaining structures are still in demand because of their relatively affordable rents.

Chawls are residential apartment blocks of a characteristic layout plan. They are typically 4 to 5 stories tall, with between 8 and 16 tenements on each floor. The tenements referred to as kholis, which literally mean 'rooms.' A central staircase services the building and gives access to a long passage which runs the length of each floor. A typical feature of chawl architecture is that this long passage is open on one side and has a row of doors on the other side, each door being the entrance to a tenement. Thus, the passage giving access to the tenement provides an open space (a 'balcony') where people residing in the tenements can come and stand, gaze at the street below, get some fresh air and sunlight and socialize with their neighbours. The fact that all the tenements are ranged on one side of the passage, leaving the other side open to the sky, is a defining feature of chawl architecture. The architectural similarity between all chawls are their balcony structures- these were created so that people could come out of their houses and interact with each other. The balconies form common grounds for people to mingle.

A usual tenement in a Chawl consists of one all purpose room, that functions both as a living and sleeping space, and a kitchen that also serves as a dining room. A frequent practice is for the kitchen to also serve as a bedroom for a newly married couple, to give them some degree of privacy. Average rents run about Rs. 10,000, equivalent to about 149 USD per month.

Families on a floor have to share a common block of latrines, each block containing typically 4 to 5 latrines. Tenements with private bathrooms are highly sought after and may cost a premium. Typically they may be available for 50% over the price of a normal chawl.

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Wikipedia