SETTING ASIDE PRIVACY

In Dadar, at the heart of the city, stands a 73-year-old building where privacy is unheard of.

 Walk through its corridors and you notice wide open doors; a man sleeping next to the stairs on the second floor landing, men sitting in the passageway playing cards; women making garlands in the same dimly-lit passage. And all the while, these people barely give you a second, suspicious glance. Inspite of you being a complete stranger and it being midnight.

 The paucity of space in the one room-kitchen houses of this building means that the passages outside the houses have become part of the house for these families that have lived here for over 2 generations. And while the passages serve as the living room, the terrace becomes the common bedroom. For, every night the families of this building sleep side by side on the terrace, their places marked by an unwritten code, a thin sheet of cloth being the mattress and the starlit sky acting as a ceiling.

 And yes. Despite the wide ajar doors, despite people sleeping on the terrace together – voyeurism and perversion find no place in their ethos. Despite men and women of all ages, from too many families sleeping on the same bare floor under the same ‘roof’. Hasn’t any untoward incident ever happened, I ask. ‘Never,’ says my friend who’s lived there all his life, surprised at the question.

 No wonder then, this is one of those rare buildings in Mumbai where neighbour-phobia has been firmly weeded out.