Fridge makes way for bride

The family now shares a two-room, 320-sq-ft accommodation in a Bombay Development Department (BDD) chawl in Worli, Mumbai, at a monthly rent of Rs 17. Chawls might be disappearing, but 16,554 such tenements constructed by BDD 86 years ago have survived, with the working class, who formerly worked in the mills, preferring to live in the small kholis (rooms).

It is a tight fit. Vishwas Bhosale, the 80-year-old patriarch, has four sons—the eldest of whom is no longer alive—and three daughters who are married. Along with the sons’ families, Vishwas’s sister too has been living in the house for the last 50 years. “Although I come from a chawl set-up, I was not used to living in a joint family. But now a large family and small rooms are a part of my life,” says Bhoomika.

“We are against dowry and had told all the brides not to bring any household items. There is no place to keep them anyway,” says Bhoomika’s husband Bipin. Despite the diktat, Bhoomika brought along a wooden diwan—others in the family sleep on the ground or on the small loft. At daybreak, the four working men and the school-going children queue up to have a bath in the small mori, an open bathroom. Whoever needs to leave home early is the first to bathe. The family shares a common toilet.