India, Aug. 8 -- Wander through Goan homes of a certain vintage, and every corner tells a surprising story, says Ulka Chauhan.

In her photobook, The Memory Keepers and Future Seekers, the advertising executive-turned-documentary photographer visits six such bungalows, recording a history that could soon be gone. Within, she represents through 120 photographs furniture with Hindu iconography carved into it, large salas or halls that seem to echo with the music of saxophones and trumpets, a nonagenarian sitting alone at a rosewood table that once seated 20.

Stories spill out of each of the book. In one, windows have recently been fitted with grilles, in a quiet reminder of how much has changed. Until a decade ago, in most villages here, f...