Soaking in the surrounds, the architect uttered spontaneously, “This space is beautiful; one can just sit here peacefully!” “Yes,” replied the young father. Both momentarily indulged the pleasure of the verandah’s surrounds. “But,” the latter added, “I have to clear the thick bushes and build a Vaai” in the open space. Bothered by his proposition, the architect quipped, “Why so?” The doting father responded, “My child is still a baby. She runs off to play here and there, and in the nearby stream. Anything can come here, no? Snakes or other animals. If the space is clean, they won't come” to cause harm. Made from bamboo or kaarvi sticks tied together, Vaai is literally a fence built around houses in adivasi padas. “You see,” the adivasi artist pointed out, “Vaai is never built in a straight line. It is always meandering!” The point being, “to reduce the speed of, not kill, big cats and other animals, while dissuading a hen to get out or a snake to come in. So really, it is built for many reasons—to protect vegetables from deer, dry and store paddy after a harvest, space to grind rice, grow creepers to shade, a place to sit, or hold on to animals such as hens, goats and cows. It is not necessary that each house has a Vaai; several houses could share one. In our community, land isn’t owned by one or another person. We don’t follow this logic, no? So it does not mark private ownership. One Vaai is built around the house to protect tender lives and another one further from the house such that all cultivation takes place within it.The latter marks the boundary of a waadi.”