NANA Chudasama loves Bombay. And Bombay loves Nana. But one mistake Bombay and no Bombayite will ever make is to invite the former Sheriff out on a Sunday for one of those fashionable society champagne brunches that begin at 10 with a late breakfast and end at 5 over high tea. For Nana will just not accept such an invitation. It would almost amount to sacrilege. �Sunday is for family and home,� he will say reluctantly but firmly, Cuban cigar in mouth, the hands gesturing helplessly. All of Bombay knows that Nana is a kind man and an accommodating man. The city and its citizens are uppermost on his mind. But not on a Sunday. He becomes a family man, then.

This is the same Nana Chudasama who will party three nights a week, who thrives on night life because he enjoys being with people, but loves domestication just as much on Sunday. �It is a happy state of affairs,� he says, puffing on the cigar. For years it has been a tradition with the Chudasamas to spend Sunday at home, Nana and Munira surrounded by their children and their families, over a lunch that is lovingly prepared by old family retainers and supervised by Munira. And which lunch will have something special for everybody, especially the four grandchildren. �I make sure that there is at least one dish that each one likes,� explains the gracious and homely Munira. It must be a challenge to cater to so many demanding tastebuds, but Munira is upto it, and fortunately the family has an adventurous palate. They try to do this every week, but sometimes, it just happens that one or the other of the Chudasamas's three children might not be free. Or the grandchildren might be preoccupied with the tugs and demands of growing up. Nana and Munira accept and understand this as part of life. Their son Akshay and daughter Shaina stay with them at their lovely Napeansea Road bungalow in Bombay with their respective families, but even then, getting together is often difficult. Which is why a conscious effort is made by all to meet for the Sunday brunch at home.

Munira describes the lunch. �My son-in-law Manish is a vegetarian and so is my daughter-in-law, Aparna, but everybody else is non-vegetarian. So one non-veg. dish goes well with everybody. The rest of the menu is vegetarian.� �The food is a hotch-potch,� son Akshay, a corporate lawyer and the real foodie in the family, adds. �It has Dad's Gujarati Rajput influence and Mom's Bohri Muslim tastes.� The Chudasamas are lucky to have cooks who are excellent at feeding the family's varied tastebuds. �They follow recipes, there is no arrogance in their methods, and they are happy to try out new dishes all the time,� says Munira of her kitchen hands. For old times' sake, she runs the menu past Nana, because he likes to be in the know of what's cooking. And because he likes a bit of variety on the table. �Bohri Muslim food, ah, I love that best, then Gujarati and Continental,� says Nana. Theirs was one of the earliest mixed marriages in Bombay. Nana, a Rajput from Saurashtra, was always a fighter, and accepted the differences and problems that crept up from the respective families when he chose to marry Munira, a Dawoodi Bohra Muslim. �After our son, Akshay, was born, the families came around,� Nana says with a laugh. The cosmopolitanism continues in the family. The children have all married out of the community. And the Gujju-Muslim Chudasama home now has Gujarati, Marwari and Muslim in-laws. They celebrate ever festivals on the Indian calendar, yes, Diwali, Idd, Christmas and New Year. �But there are no rituals allowed,� says Munira.

Nana, who has seen Bombay changing slowly but steadily over the last 35 years, says this is a city of vitality and life. �It is a delightful city with a very changing lifestyle. There is a lot of money floating around,� he says. �People have started spending. Look at the new cars on the roads, it is difficult to get a table at restaurants on a weekend night for dinner, and people have started grabbing every entertainment opportunity that comes along. Everybody loves to dress up and go out.� Despite which, he himself will not stir out on a Sunday, the family brunch at home holds him down. �I love Bombay,� Nana admits, �but I also say, a responsible citizen should be accessible to his children and his children to him. My idea of chilling out on a Sunday is being around the family, playing with my dog Tandy, watching the sea, smoking a cigar, reading, watching TV.� Munira is honest and hates to admit it, but she is not as close to Bombay as Nana is. She finds Bombay's congestion and pollution is closing in on her. She loves open spaces and is fond of traveling to far, different and way-out places, where none of the city crowd is there to spoil it for her. �Nana and I could not be more different,� she laughs. Happily, their thoughts on the family and the time they spend together are identical. Munira explains the Sunday bonding: �It is difficult to plan an outing together or even a simple dinner. Everybody is so busy doing something. So Nana and I decided to tell Brinda, Akshay and Shaina, 'We are having lunch at home on Sunday. Everybody join us.' And it has worked. Sunday now is a relaxed day which we spend together.�

Shaina N.C., their talented designer daughter and the Bharatiya Janata Party's new poster girl in Bombay, complains that life in the city is so fast that people just do not take time out to reinforce family traditions, customs and values. �Earlier, during our growing years, we used to enjoy these Sunday brunches at home, but now there is generally so much to do that sometimes it becomes difficult to even get together to catch a bite.� She is happy, however, that father Nana insists on the family bonding whenever it can on a Sunday. �I now look forward to it when I know it will happen. I enjoy the togetherness that my husband, Manish, and daughter, Shanaya, have with my parents, brother, sister and their families. And there's the food too, which is always special.� Brother Akshay, wife Aparna and daughter Wyoma, who stay with Nana and Munira, is of the same sentiment as Shaina. �Sundays are great to destress, the rest of the week is so hectic that we seldom get time to meet and spend quality time. But on Sundays, two, three, four hours are ours, we get together and debate and discuss so many things. And the food� I'm the big critic, and I'm a carnivore, but Aparna and Wyoma are vegetarian. So we have two kitchens at home. One that is purely vegetarian for Aparna. It must be difficult for Mom to manage feeding so many tastes, but she does it.�

The Chudasamas's other daughter, Brinda Miller-Chudasama, who is an artist and married to Alfaz, has two daughters, Aahana and Aashti. She talks of the Sunday brunches at her parents' home as being a good habit. �We grew up with that, it is just taken for granted that Sundays we must meet for lunch. And the lunch is so different because everybody is particular but not fussy about what they like to eat. We believe in mixing and matching food. And that way we enjoy our lunch better.� Munira, who is happy to feed Nana's passion for Bohri food, insists that she never thrust culture nor religion upon their children. She might feed them Haleem and Khichda because she believes by doing so, she is clinging to her own roots, and retaining something she learned from her own mother. But she allowed the children to follow the religions they wanted. �And they don't follow anything, I am so glad that they are all good human beings first,� she says. Festivals are not big celebrations at their home, what is a celebration is the immediate family being together, that is what they enjoy most. She and Nana also enjoy being with their set of friends out. He says that there are more parties they attend in one month now than they used to do earlier in one year! They have visited all the new night clubs, pubs and restaurants that have sprung up in the city and its suburbs, but more keep coming up. �A favourite with us is Indigo, it is full of life, the food is good. And we also like Tiffin at the Oberoi. We visit new restaurants because we like good food and we are curious to see what these places are like,� says Nana. He is a whisky or a Bacardi and coke man. Afternoons, he will have a gin and tonic. And his cigar, of course, twice a day. �I always say, if I had the chance, I would smoke a cigar while sleeping,� says the I-Love-Bombay man.