When an Ordinary Utensil Becomes a Time Machine!
My experience at YKAntiques through Pillakaluvalu’s Earth Dialogue
I recently attended an Earth Dialogue session organized by Pillakaluvalu, where we visited a small private museum in Hyderabad called YK Antiques.
I went there expecting to see old objects.
I came back thinking about something much bigger:
What if many of the things our ancestors did every day had a deeper logic behind them than we realize?
Not just the temples.
Not just the architecture.
Not just the art.
But even the vessel in which they cooked their rice.
A museum full of ordinary things
YK Antiques is not the kind of museum where you simply walk around looking at objects behind glass. The objects are ordinary. Small utensils. Boxes. Cooking vessels. Toys. Travel containers. Everyday household items. But when Y. Krishnamurti, the person behind the museum, started explaining them, those ordinary objects suddenly became stories.
Stories about how people lived.
How they travelled.
How they cooked.
How they played.
How they stored things.
How they designed objects.
And, most importantly, how deliberately they seemed to have thought about everyday life.
Krishnamurti is over 80 years old and has spent years researching and collecting these objects. Listening to him, I realized that an antique is not necessarily valuable because it is expensive or rare. Sometimes its real value is that it carries a memory of how people once lived.
How three old vessels became a museum
One of the stories that stayed with me was how the museum began. When his mother was moving from her village to Chennai, she carried three old utensils with her. They were simply household objects. Later, when those utensils were placed on a table at home, visitors began looking at them and remembering their own childhoods. Someone would see an object and suddenly remember:
“My grandmother had this.”
“We used something like this in our village.”
“I remember seeing this in my childhood.”
That made him realize something powerful.
An object can be a time machine.
You look at a small vessel, a box, or a utensil,l and suddenly you are not looking at metal anymore.
You are looking at your grandmother’s kitchen.
Your village.
Your childhood.
A way of life that may have disappeared.
That realization eventually led him to start collecting these objects.
And over many years, that collection became YKAntiques.
It is not only about what we eat
One of the most interesting parts of the session was the discussion about food.
There was an idea shared with us that I found particularly interesting:
Health begins with food, but food is not only about what we eat. It is also about how the food is prepared and what we eat it from.
The way it was explained to us was roughly:
- 80% — the quality of the raw material and where it comes from
- 15% — how the food is cooked
- 5% — how we eat it, including the vessel or material we use
Whether or not these percentages should be taken as scientific measurements, the underlying idea made me pause.
Today, we often think of cooking as a very simple process:
Take an ingredient → put it in a vessel → apply heat → eat.
But perhaps traditional cooking looked at it differently.
What ingredient?
Where did it come from?
How should it be prepared?
Which vessel should be used?
How should it be stored?
How should it finally be served?
That is a very different way of looking at food.
Not every vessel was meant for everything
This was probably one of the biggest surprises for m e. I had never seriously thought about why a particular vessel should be used for a particular food. We were introduced to traditional practices involving different materials and different cooking purposes.
For example, we were told about traditions where:
- Rice was cooked in brass
- Dal was cooked in bronze
- Tamarind preparations were associated with stone vessels
- Deep frying was associated with iron
Different materials were used for different preparations and storage. We also heard about the use of particular metals for specific dishes, including the traditional use of tin-lined vessels for preparations such as rasam.
The important thing for me wasn’t simply:
“Rice goes into brass and dal goes into bronze.”
The bigger realization was:
Why did people even think this way?
Why didn’t they make one vessel and use it for everything?
Today, industrial manufacturing encourages exactly that.
One product.
One material.
Mass production.
Mass consumption.
Maximum convenience.
But these older systems seem to have approached objects differently:
What is the purpose of this object?
What material is best suited for that purpose?
How long should it last?
That difference in mindset fascinated me.
The children’s cooking game suddenly made sense
One of my favorite discoveries at the museum was something I had seen before but never understood.
Miniature cooking utensils.??
As children, many of us have seen tiny vessels and miniature kitchen sets.We assume they are simply toys.But I learned about a traditional children’s game called -బోల్ల ఆట, where children played with miniature household and cooking utensils.
Suddenly, the toy looked different to me. Maybe the child wasn’t simply “playing kitchen.”Maybe the child was learning.
Which vessel is used for what?
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How does a kitchen work?
What does cooking involve?
How are household activities organized?
Children were learning through imitation and play.
And this made me think about something we often forget:
Education doesn’t always happen in a classroom.
Sometimes it happens in a kitchen. Sometimes in a field…Sometimes through a game…
Objects designed for a purpose
Another thing that stayed with me was the sheer thought put into the design of everyday objects.
We saw examples of collapsible tumblers designed for travel and pilgrimage.
There were boxes within boxes, multiple containers designed to fit together inside a larger box.
There were small specialized objects whose purpose would be almost impossible to understand today without someone explaining them.
One example concerned Nippu-patra/Nippu-pallam, associated with the traditional practice of generating and carrying fire.
There were also objects such as Kanchu-kagada, whose purpose was connected with fire.
These objects made me realize something:
Design was not separated from life.
The object was designed around the exact problem it needed to solve.
Three principles of making an object
At this point, Y. Krishnamurti explained something that stayed with me.
According to him, when people in earlier generations created an object, they had three important things in mind.
1. It should serve the exact purpose
The object should be created for a specific purpose and should serve that purpose properly.
It wasn’t simply about making something that worked somehow. The design, material, and form were connected to what the object was actually meant to do.
2. It should last for seven generations
The second principle he spoke about was longevity.
An object should be made in such a way that it could last for seven generations.
That idea feels almost opposite to the way we consume products today.
We often buy something, use it for a few years, and replace it.
But the philosophy he described was to make something that could be maintained, passed down, and continue serving its purpose across generations.
3. It should be artistic
The third principle was that the object should also be artistic and beautiful.
It wasn’t enough for an object to simply be functional and durable.
It should also have beauty.
This part especially made me think.
I personally believe that beauty can make us care more deeply about an object. When something is beautiful and meaningful to us, we are more likely to preserve it, maintain it, and pass it on rather than simply throw it away.
But the three principles themselves, purpose, longevity, and artistic beauty, were not my own conclusions. They were ideas that Y. Krishnamurti shared with us while explaining the philosophy behind these traditional objects.
And hearing him explain them changed the way I looked at the objects around me.
What happened to this way of thinking?
This is where the museum visit became much bigger for me.
We often talk about the Industrial Revolution as one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
And it was.
Mass production gave us affordability, accessibility, and convenience.
But mass production also introduced a different philosophy:
Make one product that can be used by millions.
One material.
One design.
One process.
One product for everyone.
Traditional systems often seem to have asked the opposite question:
What is the specific purpose, and what is the right material for that purpose?
There is something worth thinking about here.
If every material has different properties, why should one material be ideal for everything?
If every food is different, why should every food be cooked and stored in exactly the same way?
If every environment is different, why should every house be built in exactly the same way?
Were our ancestors really that intelligent?
This question kept coming back to me.
We sometimes look at ancient Indian practices and dismiss them as superstition simply because we don’t immediately understand them.
But then I think about the temples that took generations to build.
The metallurgy.
The architecture.
Water management.
Agriculture.
Textiles.
Food preservation.
Traditional medicine.
And now, even something as simple as the design of a cooking vessel. It becomes difficult to believe that everything was random. That doesn’t mean everything ancient was correct. It doesn’t mean we should blindly accept every traditional practice. And it certainly doesn’t mean modern science has nothing to teach us.Quite the opposite.I think the right response is curiosity. Instead of saying: “Our ancestors knew everything.”or“Everything traditional is superstition.” we should ask:
“Why did they do this?”
Then investigate.
Test it.
Understand it.
Keep what works.
Discard what doesn’t.
What if the real technology was the thinking?
Perhaps the most valuable thing I took away from YK Antiques wasn’t any particular object I saw there. It was a way of thinking. Our ancestors lived in a world where resources were limited. Metal was valuable. Making an object required time. Repairing was preferable to replacing. Food was seasonal. Objects had to work. And therefore, every decision mattered. Today, we have enormous access to materials and technology. But perhaps we have lost some of the discipline of asking:
Why this material?
Why this design?
Why this process?
How long will this last?
Can it be repaired?
Can it be passed on?
Does it truly serve its purpose?
These are not ancient questions.
They are extremely modern questions.
Especially in a world struggling with waste, resource depletion, and environmental degradation.
Thank you @pillakaluvalu and @ykantiques.
