India, April 18 -- There are few words in the English language that can conjure as many vastly differing images as "bungalow".

Depending on where in the world one is, and when, a bungalow could be a cottage-like structure amid a plantation in British Malaya (1826-1957) or a country home in rural England. It could stand for the official residence of a government administrator or evoke the ordered and manicured layouts of stereotypical suburbia.

The history of the bungalow is more than that of a private residence. It represents how the domestic space was transformed by factors as global as colonialism, industrialisation, urbanisation, and migration, and as local as personal desires, aspirations and changing traditions.

We'll get to each ...