A haveli that has weathered 200 years in Ahmedabad’s old city and the man who fights to keep it standing have found the last two decades the most trying yet

“Do you know Guruji? Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar?” asks Duttatrey Vyas, sitting in his living room that was once used to store grains. “He visited this house. As did Narendra Modi, when he was an RSS worker.”

Vyas is referring to the 200-year-old haveli his family has lived in since 1942. One that embodies two decades of his struggle to reside in and restore a crumbling relic of Ahmedabad’s architectural heritage. Located in the old city, in Pushkarna Ni Pol, named after the once predominant Pushkarna Brahmin community, the haveli was rented out to his father, advocate Harish Shankar Reva Shankar Vyas, for ₹40 a month by Balabhai Girdharbhai Seth, a cotton mill owner. Harish Shankar Vyas was also the head of the Ahmedabad branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which functioned out of the haveli until 1968.

After his father’s death, Duttatrey Vyas continued to live in the house with his two brothers and their families. At the time, he was the chief cashier at Bharat Suryodaya Mills. But by the late ’80s, the brothers had all bought flats in newer parts of the city, and Vyas and his family — wife, two daughters and a son — became the haveli’s sole occupants.

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(Tag: Resilience)