Ours was a very isolated unit of the larger family but we had an extended community of people that would always be at our house. Some relatives rarely came over but some others came over frequently. For us, those were the days when we did not expect our visitors to take permission or intimate us beforehand if they wanted to visit us. People just came over.
We were four of us, my father -- Mr. B. N. Bhushan, my mother -- Mrs. Sharda Bhushan, myself -- Bharat and my sister, younger by an year, Uma or Sarala or Aruna as she was known by.
We lived in a second floor 270 square feet apartment at Narulla building on 21st Road at Chembur in Mumbai right up to 1972, and later, forever it seems, at the Usha building in a 320 square feet ground floor corner apartment at Wadala in Mumbai.
The happiest part of it was that we were never claustrophobic in the 320 apartment though I have felt trapped in larger rooms in my later years. We had converted the kitchen into a livable bedroom and multipurpose room and the balcony was adapted to serve as a kitchen. It had a rear door that opened out into the open area of the apartment building and was sheltered on all three sides by tall compound walls. So in a way, that smallish apartment also functioned as a bungalow.
All over relatives living in other cities and in other parts of Mumbai had larger apartments while some that lived in Tirupati, Hyderabad and Chennai had large bungalows. I would always envy that, of course, but never felt despondent or sad when I returned to our perfect little apartment, whenever.
Bharat Bhushan bharatbhushan@yahoo.com 5 September 2022
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