We lived in a 320 square feet
ground floor apartment at Wadala, Mumbai, through my childhood and formative
years, through marriage in 1986 and onwards to moving out to Pune in 1996. My
father, Balapila Naga Bhushan stayed back at Wadala until the December of 2008.
We retained the house through many trying years and plenty of happy times. It
was a one-room plus kitchen plus balcony. We modified it by moving out the
kitchen to the balcony and used the available modified space as an additional
room. Both rooms were for all-round general purposes and were used as bedrooms,
study rooms, prayer halls, TV space, lounging area and whatever.
The kitchen in the balcony was a
new idea and many apartment houses in the area were warming up to the concept.
Our neighbour had also converted their balcony and we were not alone in this
innovation. Nobody pointed fingers and there were no complaints from the
resident’s association. The municipal corporation in Mumbai is generally kind
to such actions and they came and inspected the premises and said that it was a
violation and that we would have to pay up a “compounding fee”, which we did,
and that was that.
The kitchen window backed up into
the hall-plus-bedroom and the entire family slept there on coir mattresses on
the floor until plastic mattresses replaced them. The climate in Mumbai was
very unique in our childhood days. Nobody needed a bedsheet to cover oneself
and one did not require any cotton mattress or groundsheet to sleep on. A coir
sheet was perfectly okay and we got really splendidly woven ones from Kerala.
Vendors would bring them in to Matunga and one could bargain forever and get a
real good deal if one was persistent.
Early mornings, we generally woke
up to the excellent and enticing aroma of filter coffee being brewed by my
father in the balcony-kitchen. The tremendous waft would forcibly wake us up.
My father was a specialist at his art. A real master. He would brew the filter
coffee that he procured regularly and faithfully from Phillips at Matunga with
hot steaming water. In those moments, the milk would be got ready, boiled,
diluted to the correct measure and kept ready to receive the filter decoction.
My mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, would have already been up and she would
be getting ready to get out of the house to reach the school where she worked
as a teacher during the early seventies and later as a headmistress in the late
seventies and early eighties and until her retirement.
My father would not partake of the
coffee or distribute it until he had placed some milk in a small vessel on the prayer
shelf in front of the deities. He would recite a brief prayer and my mother
would take over the space after having had her bath. This was a fixed routine
in an apartment with only one bathroom and one toilet. The person who would
exit the house first always got priority in the queue. After the prayers, my
father would distribute steaming hot coffee to each one of us. That was a sacred
ritual in our small and compact family. We never realised it. My father had
privilege of getting it ready and handing it over to each one of us. We would
sit quietly, each one on the coir mattress, our backs leaning on the wall,
sipping the coffee, enjoying it and delighting in the taste and flavour. I do
not think any south Indian house would be different in those years. The moment
of drinking the first morning cup of filter coffee was pure pleasure and every
family would probably indulge in it.
I often wondered as to why my
mother did not make that first cup of filter coffee. She did the second round
in the morning though, and later in the evening. The night round was made by my
sister, Sarala, much against the wishes of my parents. This was only for me, as
I would sit late at night, reading novels and comics and whatever. We did not
have much of anything else to do at home until the black and white TV entered
the room and took over much of our future.
The filter coffee decoction vessel
was also different for use by my father or by my mother. The one used by my
father was a small and compact one and cleaned efficiently by him and kept
aside in a location where my mother and sister could not access. He would
always claim that the ladies did not know how to clean the decoction vessel
properly. Only men were good at that activity. His younger brother, Shantaram
Naidu, always agreed with him, as he did on each point made by my father. Their
father and my grandfather, Shyamala Ranga Bhashyam, on the weekends that he
stayed with us, was most happy when he saw his elder son preparing the filter
coffee. He would not control his patience and would take over the act of
performing the first prayer so that it would force my father to hurry up with
the final preparations of serving or distributing the filter coffee.
My grandfather needed an entire
large mug of filter coffee, almost equal to four of our cups. He would indulge
in it, by worshipping an entire range of gods, seeking their blessings from the
heavens by pointing the coffee mug at every other corner of the skies. My
father would wait quietly with his cup of coffee and ask politely if my
grandfather would need a refill. Precious memories, all.
My mother would be wary of serving
the second cup of coffee to my grandfather, ie her father-in-law. She knew that
he would be very demanding of the correct taste, the exact proportions and the
rightful flavour. She could not cheat by asking my father to make it as he
would do it, for my grandfather would recognise the difference. So, she would
make it as she would, and hand it over to my grandfather and would immediately
place a disclaimer, “This is of course not as good as your son would do, but
what to do, we are not perfect, all of us.” That would certainly allow her to
escape with a smiling nod from my grandfather who would agree with the confirmation,
“Yes, of course, nobody can make filter coffee like Babu ( = his name for his
elder son) can.”
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