The Naidu house stood close to the sea, in Uppada’s old market area. For years, it had been part of everyday movement. The front opened into small shops, a tailor stitching clothes, a barber trimming hair, a grocery shelf stacked with basics, and stalls selling oil and wood for fishing boats. Above these shops were rented rooms, where families who had already lost their homes to the sea found temporary shelter.

​

The house belonged to two brothers, Ramu Naidu and Setlangam Naidu. It carried many lives within it, until the cyclone of 2014 arrived. The storm damaged the structure badly. Parts of the roof collapsed, walls cracked, and rainwater flooded the upper floor. After the cyclone, the brothers moved their families further inside the village, to safer ground.

​

The house was later sold to Vijaya Lakshmi, a widowed fisherwoman trying to hold her life together after loss. She did not rebuild everything. She repaired only what was necessary. The ground floor was fixed enough to live and work in, while the upper floor remained broken and unused. There was no money to repair it, and no urgency to do so.

​

Vijaya Lakshmi opened a small grocery shop on the ground floor and rented out the remaining rooms to fishermen’s families. During the day, the men went out to sea. In the evenings, the women prepared snacks to sell nearby. The house slowly returned to use, though not in the way it once was.

​

The empty upper floor stayed silent. Wind passed through broken openings. Rain entered freely. Below, life continued. People gathered near the house to sit, drink, and talk. The ruin did not disappear; it simply stepped back, allowing new routines to form around it.

​

The house survived in fragments. Like many lives along the coast, it was neither whole nor abandoned. It remained present, carrying work, shelter, memory, and everyday life within its damaged frame.