Adil Jussawalla’s Bombay: When writer Mulk Raj Anand visited the poet at his home

When I decided to settle in Bombay in 1970, I didn’t know I’d rise to soaring heights within a year. The heights can be measured. Their location is a flat on the 18th floor of a building in Cuffe Parade, a space that four members of the family, including myself, bought in 1970 itself; it was impossible not to.

Someone had booked the flat and then withdrawn, leaving it free just for us to take over, or so it seemed. As we walked in through the door into the vacant flat, the sea and sky rose before our eyes in dazzling splendour.

The view from the balcony overlooked a building with two Saracenic domes, beyond them a mill, a fishing dock and trawlers floating in the sea. The view clinched the deal for us. It would have been mad to look elsewhere.

I knew Mulk Raj Anand lived in the building with the Saracenic domes but I didn’t know in which part of the building. Sometimes I thought he had a whole floor to himself, sometimes I felt he occupied a room under one of the domes.

Used to living by myself for long periods at a time, and sometimes wanting to get away from...

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