At the time, I had no idea what DakshinaChitra would eventually become. In fact, I thought the museum would only succeed if it was located in Chennai. That was probably my biggest mistake! For six years, I went from one Tamil Nadu government IAS officer to another, looking at whatever land might be available in the city. I never saw more than three acres and usually much less. Gradually, I began to scale down my ambitions, thinking that perhaps I would have to limit the museum to selected elements of craft and architecture. Of course, none of the land I was shown ever materialised.

It was only in late 1990, when we were finally sanctioned land, that I could begin to put my ideas into practice. When I first saw the site, 27 kilometres from the city, I just knew it was perfect. I realised that here we could bring in entire houses and create settings in which craftspeople and folk performing artists would feel at home.

After we acquired the land, I approached Laurie Baker to discuss the kind of museum I had in mind. Dashrath Patel, formerly of NID, had also contributed ideas. But it was when Baker visited the site, walked around imagining the different regional settings and began sketching hypothetical scenes, that the full concept of the museum really came to life.

Did I envisage how the museum would eventually develop? Did I think it would become successful? Not really. I simply decided to do whatever I could and hope for the best. I had no idea whether the museum would succeed, but I felt I should at least try.

Why did I want to start a museum in the first place? I was not born in India. I was happy in my marriage to Raj Thiagarajan, but I felt I needed to be more than a wife and mother if I was to feel truly part of India. I had held various jobs and experimented with different kinds of work, but it was culture, together with my earlier experience of working in villages, that seemed to offer me a sense of belonging. I just needed to understand what I could do in that field.

Raj kept telling me that I should stop taking on various small jobs and think bigger. After much deliberation and with his encouragement, the idea of setting up a museum gradually took shape. It seemed a natural direction for me, even though I had no idea whether I had the ability to make it succeed.

The six-year wait for land, from 1984 to 1990, was difficult. But in retrospect, it also gave me time to understand the dimensions and potential of the kind of museum I wanted to create.

During those years, we concentrated on bringing Indian music and folk performing arts into schools. Through INTACH, where I was appointed Tamil Nadu Convener in 1984, I also worked on environmental issues, particularly climate change, water and rivers, as well as culture.

By 1990, however, I was ready to call it quits. I was deeply discouraged and had begun to feel that the museum would never take off. I even started thinking about discussing with Raj the possibility of returning to the United States. He had been an associate professor in the business school at the University of Rochester and I knew he could easily return to academia.

Then, quite suddenly, the land came through. Almost immediately afterwards, Raj suffered a major heart attack at the age of 46. At the same time, I received my first Ford Foundation grant of 50,000 dollars, spread over three years. This enabled me to employ staff and begin holding programmes. Looking back, I sometimes think I was never destined to leave India!

The roots of DakshinaChitra go back to my early experiences of working in villages. After I had been in India for two years, I was employed by the Tamil Nadu Nutrition Project to interview women in western Tamil Nadu who were pregnant or had children under the age of two. I was asked to find out what they ate and what they fed their children.

I was subsequently employed by CARE, which at the time supplied bulgur wheat and the ingredients for a chutney. The Tamil Nadu government supplied rice three days a week as part of what was then a relatively new midday meals programme. My job was to assess the success and efficiency of this programme throughout Tamil Nadu.

For three and a half years, I spent most of my life in villages. That experience was truly how I fell in love with India.

I was enormously impressed and humbled by the strength, both mental and physical, and the generosity of the women I met, despite the tremendous adversity they faced. Their resilience, their resourcefulness and their generosity made a lasting impression on me.

That experience is really the key to understanding DakshinaChitra. It was through these encounters that I began to appreciate the richness of everyday life, the diversity of communities and the extraordinary cultural knowledge embedded in ordinary homes and occupations.

Having travelled through so many villages, I had seen an enormous variety of houses and architectural styles. Raj was also a Nattukottai Chettiar, a community well known for its magnificent mansions, which incorporate many of the crafts of Tamil Nadu.

I applied to the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts for grants to study the traditional houses of South India, taking one state at a time. Each grant covered two years.

I began with Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and finally Andhra Pradesh. I contacted architectural schools, put together research teams for each state, organised the fieldwork and travelled with the teams.

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to concentrate exclusively on South India. Its extraordinarily rich and diverse cultures, as expressed through everyday arts and architecture, seemed to me to be greatly neglected.

Based on our fieldwork, I developed a plan of the houses I wanted to bring to DakshinaChitra.

For Tamil Nadu, I selected houses representing different occupations. For Kerala, I wanted to include houses from both the northern and southern parts of the state, as well as representations of its three major religious communities: Christian, Hindu and Muslim.

For Karnataka, I looked at the different ecological regions of the state and how these influenced architectural styles.

For Andhra Pradesh, which at that time also included what is now Telangana, I considered the coastal regions, fertile plains, areas influenced by the earlier Nawabi culture and the semi-arid regions.

I was never able to reach the far northern parts of the then Andhra Pradesh because of the Naxalite presence. On several trips, I was turned back by the police because of encounters in the area. I decided to select primarily middle-class houses that were representative of architectural styles and aesthetics found in at least 80 to 100 villages. I wanted houses that reflected the everyday lives of ordinary people rather than just exceptional or grand buildings.

Were there disagreements or difficult choices about which houses to include? There were some disagreements about what should go into individual houses, but not really about the houses we selected. I generally went to the families who had lived in these houses and asked how they used the different spaces, what their customs were and what they felt should be included in their homes.

In those early years, before the museum opened, I worked largely with volunteers. One interesting thing I discovered was that people from different communities often had very little idea of how differently other communities lived. Everyone tended to think that the way they did things was the best way and that everyone else did the same. Nevertheless, we managed to resolve our differences of opinion quite amicably.

I was not able to bring in all the houses I had originally planned for either Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh. I would have loved to have had the full representation I envisaged.

The Deccan, in particular, had some beautiful stone houses. On several trips, I searched for one that I felt would be spectacular for DakshinaChitra. Eventually, I found just what I wanted in a village near Gulbarga. I even signed a sale agreement and paid a deposit. Unfortunately, a nephew obtained a stay order, and that was the end of that particular project.

What makes this especially sad is how much has changed since then. I returned to the villages near Gulbarga just two years ago and found that many of those beautiful old houses were falling into decay. Their owners had moved to cities in search of better opportunities. The status associated with being a landowner had changed dramatically over the past 30 years.

I am sure I could find another wonderful stone house today, but I am now too old to take on the enormous logistical challenge of dismantling a stone building and transporting it all the way to Madras.

For the earlier houses, I had worked out arrangements with Birla Cement Company and L&T, who were willing to help with the logistics.

Our greatest challenge was raising the money to establish the museum. Everyone became involved in fundraising, and we managed with support from the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, TTDC and most importantly, corporate donors. CK Prahalad, who was a close friend of Raj, once asked me what I thought would be my greatest challenge. I immediately said it would be raising funds. He disagreed. He told me that my greatest challenge would be people.

Looking back, I think he was right. We have been extremely fortunate to have had excellent and committed staff. Their dedication has been essential to the growth and success of DakshinaChitra.

As many of us grow older, we have also begun to look for and bring in younger staff who can keep the museum relevant and responsive to the interests of a younger generation.

Yes, very much so. We have seen a growing interest among young people and young families, particularly those with children, in heritage and in visiting the museum. Many of today's young visitors first came to DakshinaChitra as schoolchildren. They are now returning with their own children.

When we began in the 1980s, there was still a considerable hangover of colonial attitudes towards Indian heritage. British personnel in India had often displayed little knowledge of, or respect for, indigenous art and culture, and this had influenced how Indians themselves viewed their own heritage.

In the 1990s, students were just beginning to question what their culture really was and how they could learn more about it.

Even architectural education was very different then. There were only two architectural schools in Tamil Nadu, and students were largely asked to sketch modern buildings rather than traditional architecture.

Today, the situation has changed enormously. Architectural schools want their students to have a grounding in traditional architecture, and they all bring their students to DakshinaChitra. It is wonderful to see them sitting around the houses, sketching and studying the details.

DakshinaChitra has become very popular, with more than 250,000 visitors each year. Nevertheless, I think there are still many people who do not even know we exist, and we are trying to address that.

I believe young people genuinely want to learn about their past and their culture. Our craftspeople and folk performers are particularly popular with them.

But much more needs to be done to encourage the children of traditional artisans and performers to continue their inherited traditions while also finding ways to innovate.

Some of these young people have gone through design and art colleges. However, it takes a real artist to recognise the contemporary potential of a traditional design.

We had a brilliant potter, Ram Velar, who was a true artist. He could take traditional motifs and translate them into beautiful contemporary forms. Tara Publications even produced a book on him. He has now retired, but his son works with us.

Ultimately, if our traditional crafts and folk performances are to survive well into the future, two things are essential. First, practitioners must receive the respect they deserve, both for their extraordinary skills and talents and for who they are as people.

Second, their products and performances must generate the income they deserve. It is not easy to produce something of real quality and beauty. It requires skill, an understanding of materials, patience, an eye for detail and a strong sense of concept.

We can see similar challenges in other art forms. Look at our musicians who are experimenting with contemporary music, or dancers and institutions such as Attakkalari, which are creating platforms for contemporary dance inspired by Indian traditions. These artists, too, struggle to find their place in the mainstream. Art, and being an artist, has never been easy. But in our increasingly complicated and messy world, I believe art is one of the few things that can bring us joy and a sense of peace.