She had the temerity to tell MF Husain, "What's this nonsense, I can paint better than you." The artist laughed indulgently at Tasneem Tinwala, little more than a toddler when they lived across a landing of Goorishina building in 1970s Agripada. The two families' front doors open daylong, children skipped in and out of each other's homes. "He would mix colours on the living room floor — with his hands, no brush — warning, 'Step carefully, don't slip!'"

Husain's son Owais says, "We moved to Goorishina for its proximity to Patrao Maternity Nursing Home, convenient when my mother was expecting me. The house was always busy with artists, writers and poets, noisy in their guffaws and heated conversations. Unbelievable how we comfortably accommodated the traffic of visitors in our small apartment crowded with a relatively large family and a flow of my father's barely dry paintings on the walls."