As a teenager, I spent many hours in the bathroom in our tiny flat in Mumbai which my family had rented for over seventy years.

It was my get-away, a place of quiet and solitude, a place of day-dreams and future-plans, a place that was like a blanket during the lashing rains of the Mumbai monsoons.

I can see it now in my minds eye: the rough and uneven stone floor, a old pot with cracks and stains that had been patched up many times with the tap on the left, an incongruous large white porcelein bathtub in the corner which didn’t work anymore and was used for washing clothes, a tiny shower which sprayed water fast or slow, hot or cold as per it’s mood, a geyser that caused a me a lot of tension for it had to be switched off when the water was hot or else “it will explode”, a basin with one tap working, toothbrushes that were frayed and smelled of old people, and various tubs and bottles of homemade potions for hair growth (infused with curry leaves, onions and other smelly vegetable matter) perched above the basin, and the one uncovered yellow sixty-watt bulb.

I used to look from the bathroom window into the neighbouring police station where there was always some action to enjoy, the flag hoisting and the national anthem during my morning ablutions, the comings-and-goings of police jeeps through the day, and the whines and wails of whores and winos at night.

Then there were my enemies and friends at the mesh-covered window: the pigeons who I hated, and the crows that I liked, who my grandmother used to feed and speak to, who my mother hated but grew to love, those family friends who cawed in anguish and fasted for days when my grandmother passed.