The Hall in a Goan Home

Walk into an older Goan house and you step straight into the hall — the sala of a Portuguese-era home, often running the full depth of the front, with a row of tall windows or wooden-shuttered doors onto the balcão and three or four internal doors leading off it to bedrooms, the dining area and the kitchen passage. In a newer flat the hall is the combined living-and-dining space of a 2BHK or 3BHK, with a sliding door to a balcony and the main door opening into it. Either way it is the largest room you will furnish, and the one with the most openings.

It is also the room that changes use through the year. On an ordinary weekday it is a family room with the television on. At Christmas, Ganesh Chaturthi, a christening, a wedding or a novena it fills with relatives, extra chairs come in from the neighbours, and sometimes a home altar or a decorated mandap becomes the centre of attention. Furnishings have to look settled on a quiet afternoon and still cope with forty people, children running between the doors and plates of food balanced on the sofa arms.

So we plan a hall around its openings and its crowds: which windows need light and which need privacy from the road, how many people the seating must take on a big day, which wall becomes the backdrop for the television or the altar, and what will stand up to heavy use through a humid monsoon.