A study was conducted to understand the cooking spaces of rural houses. This study was conducted to look for existing patterns and characteristics in the design, space usage and location of cooking spaces with respect to the living space in a household. The aim was to find out the desirable and comforting characteristics of the rural cooking spaces as against the undesirable characteristics which should be impacted upon through our domestic energy program in rural areas. Sixteen sample households were documented in detail. The surveyed houses belonged to two different clusters, four villages and a different community with in each village of the Bundelkhand region.

All the households have sloping roofs above cooking spaces to allow for air movement through the clay tiles (khapral) that are clad on wooden understructure covers this space. The cooking space spills out towards living area, which is normally the central courtyard of the house. A very private activity such as cooking is visible to guests and outsiders. The roof and the varying location of the cooking space is in direct response to the ventilation problems related to indoor cooking. Currently, rural households have seasonal cooking spaces, which are moved from open or semi-covered to indoors as the season demands. During rainy seasons and peak summer, when it becomes literally impossible to cook outdoors in open, amilies are forced to move their chulha indoors. The earlier understanding was that this shifting of cooking spaces has cultural and traditional implications and that their life style actually demands a cooking space spilling over to the courtyard or the living space. However, our study showed that all the above is a myth and the households actually prefer to have an all season enclosed cooking area, separate from the living space, given of course, that the ventilation problem is solved.

Most houses are old and don’t have openings to allow for ventilation. This is on account of security reasons. Few of us believed that traditional rural houses are designed in such a way to allow for maximum privacy. However, we found that the lack of openings is often on account of security and not so much about privacy. The newer constructions, where the families can afford to put grill and rods for security, windows have been provided for ventilation. In these cases, cooking is done indoors round the year.

The cleanliness of a cooking space is a very important issue and was observed keenly. The chulhas, floor and the lower walls close to the cooking space were noticeably clean. This is because the chulha is routinely plastered with mud and dung slurry everyday after cooking and the floor is plastered on an average every ten days. However, all the roofs and the upper part of walls with difficult accessibility were very dirty and covered with soot. Another important reason for the general cleanliness of the cooking spaces was that water is stored away from the cooking spaces. Although a slightly uncomfortable practice, it is maintained in all the households because most cooking spaces have kutcha floors and even little bit of spilt water causes a mess in the cooking area.

The most commonly used fuel for cooking are forest wood and kandas. Both being bulky in nature, use up approximately 75% to 80% of the house area for storage, leaving very little space for living. These materials also need to be stored in a dry place. Bhusa and food grains are the other things stored in bulk. Women from families too poor to buy wood and dung cakes from the market, spend at least three to four hours daily to collect them from far and near places.