Over 80 years of facilitating humanitarian work

When visiting the Dharm Shala, it is difficult to miss the colonial wooden structure on the opposite side of the road.  A quaint Folk Victorian style house, characterised by its two and one-half storeys, shuttered stained glass windows, gothic carpentry details and square symmetrical shape, it is a white and brown residential property that has been standing for more than 80 years.

Built in 1932 by humanitarian Pandit Ramsaroop Maraj, the building has been in the family for three generations and counting; it has remained the same with no structural alterations during its 82 years of existence.

However, planks of wood have been replaced over the years for the maintenance and preservation of the structure, Stella Ramsaroop, Maraj’s granddaughter who currently resides on the property, explained to the Guyana Times Sunday Magazine.

“Because it’s a wooden building, ever so often you find wood ants and such and we would have to replace the wood, but the structure is just the same, it hasn’t changed and we wouldn’t change it,” she declared.

According to Ramsaroop, they have had good luck over the years because renovations were not “necessary very often” due to the building being built with “excellent wood cured for many years”.

Built with planks of Mora, the family sprays the house quarterly for wood-destroying pests and regularly cleans it to keep it in the best shape possible.

“It is a family house, but we use it for Dharm Shala as well; we use it as a reception area and for meeting purposes,” stated Ramsaroop. She added that her grandfather built the house to keep “nearby” to his work, that is, his charity work at Dharm Shala, located opposite the house, which he founded in the early 1920s.

With what is described as ‘two and one-half’ storeys by modern architecture, the first two floors have a square symmetrical shape, while the smaller top flat, found just above an eave (an edge roof projecting beyond the building for both practical and decorative functions), has a front gable (a triangular formed sloping roof) with carpenter gothic details (gingerbread trim/intricate wooden designs).

Such houses, Folk Victorian, are often characterised by aligned horizontally and vertically symmetrical windows in rows, which can also be clearly seen on the house along with the added colonial features of stained glass and wooden shutters.

After Ramsaroop’s grandfather died in 1950, the house was passed on to her late father, Harisaran Ramsaroop, who dutifully cared for it for 63 years until he died in 2013, passing it on to his children.

“My father was very efficient and conscious of things around him, he was an extraordinary person, so he kept repairing and repainting it,” Ramsaroop recalled.

 With the bottom floor used mainly as a store room and the very top as living quarters (mostly bedrooms), the middle flat is generally used as a reception area, a boardroom for volunteer meetings, and the operations office of the Dharm Shala.

Even around the yard one can find antiquities. There is a towering tank, presumably a vacuum pan acquired by Maraj from a sugar estate (used as a water tank to this day), a small Lord Shiva mandir, and the St Francis Chapel (an old Anglican church); all fixtures present since the construction of the building.