This Tuesday morning, rain is lashing a Delhi terrace. Seen through a room’s raindrop-speckled window, the terrace is drenched and deserted, see photo. This was what the room was meant for: a place to run to when the barsat arrived. A barsati.
In the classic 1981 comedy Chashme Buddoor, three friends share a single barsati; the film was shot in a Defence Colony barsati. It then cuts to the same address in May 2026. Barsati rents were cheap, and tenants were often young migrants with bohemian tendencies. Some barsati wale went on to become famous. Painter MF Husain and artist Zarina Hashmi lived in Jangpura barsatis, writers Amitav Ghosh and Pankaj Mishra in Defence Colony, and sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee in Nizamuddin East. By the 1970s and 80s, barsati dwellers had become a type. They wore purani jeans, sang along to the Beatles, recited Faiz, sympathised with Marxism, and kept themselves up to date with Pauline Kael’s movie reviews. Swaddled in sutta smoke on the terrace late into the night, they gossiped about yaar-dost, blasted the unfair system, and railed against Henry Kissinger and similar symbols of the US foreign policy. Their rooms might have a gadda on the floor for a bed, chik curtain for the window, a Madhubani painting on the wall, and a bamboo bookshelf stacked with Penguin UK paperbacks. The Chashme Buddoor barsati lately reappeared in an Instagram post by @imvcpramod, who tracked down the Defence Colony address where the film was shot. The post first shows the film clip of the actors standing on the barsati terrace. A multi-storey is standing at the site. As if the terrace never existed. RIP, beloved barsati.
