Bhooth Bungalow

This house, as you can tell by the sepia-tone, is haunted.

Actually, a lot of the old mansions in Malabar Hill, the old-money neighborhood just north of the Governor's mansion in Southeast Bombay, have the same feeling. They're falling apart. They're crumbling almost as fast as the family fortunes that built them. They have 5 or 10 families sometimes, entire kin networks of servants and their cousins and their cousins' cousins, squatting in the halls with cooking fires, and often the owners seem too dejected to drive them out.

This one, which belongs to the family Khatau, the aunts and uncles of my friend J. from America, has what was once a gorgeous Grand Staircase and chandelier-adorned lobby which must have seen some pretty good parties in its day. It's now basically condemned. J's uncle, who got cut out of the family business (importing syringes, of all things) by a vindictive grandfather, has lost it and lives in an unlit attic apartment reading year-old newspapers all the time and not speaking to anyone. Very creepy, but awesome-creepy, ya know?

So that's what this is-- a bhooth bungalow. Ghost House.