« Mapless in Matunga | Main | No Mall-Practice in Matunga »
June 16, 2005
Dimple on the Cheek of Matunga
Way before Baskin Robbins almost killed Abbas (the circulating library), way before the softy ice-cream wars erupted along the southern corner of “the Circle” and way before Kwality, Vadilal and other similar brands…there was “Dimple Ice-Cream”.
Dimple Ice-Cream was “home-made” ice-cream, made manually in an ice-cream churner, by Dimple, which was a snack-bar opposite Don Bosco. It doesn’t exist today…about 15 odd years ago, it was bought over and in its place today stands a typical fast-food joint called Classic, which serves everything from Chinese to pav-bhaji to South Indian food (though why anyone would want to have idlis in Classic as against Mysore Café is beyond me!).
Dimple used to serve sandwiches, bhel, juices, milk-shakes and of course, their signature ice-cream, of which “sitafal” was the best. The owners were Gujarati and used to sit at the counter and knew their customers by face and name. I was a regular there during short-recess from school. I was given Re. 1 by my Mom, which I had to hand over to the guy at the counter, in return for one sandwich and their pumpkin-tomato ketchup.
The mezzanine floor was air-conditioned and during the day, was used by couples from Khalsa college. As school-kids we would often sit below and try and figure out from the shadows moving against the partly opaque glass, whether those couples were necking or not.
People used to come from all over the place to eat the ice-cream or to order out. Home-made ice-cream is different from the factory-made ice-cream that we are used to. It is colder and takes longer to melt and if you’re not careful and eat too much immediately, the cold can hit your frontal sinuses instantaneously.
The owners eventually left, but I didn’t know where they had gone, until an incident that occurred in 1994 in the US. This is one among similar other instances, that makes me less and less surprised at coincidences and the fact that we are such a small world.
My wife and I were traveling from New York to Atlantic city, with an older friend, when we stopped for a quick lunch in a small, one gas-station town in New Jersey, that I was told was an “Indian town”. It had saree shops, a dosa place and other Indian shops. We were having dosas in the dosa joint, when I saw across the road, a fast-flood parlor called “Dimple”. I mentioned to my friend that we used to have a similar snack-bar back home and then on an impulse I walked across the road to have a look. And…you guessed right…they were the same people, who had migrated to this small town in New Jersey and transported their snack-bar here along with their home-made “Dimple” ice-cream. And to top it all…they recognized me by name. Wow!
Classic used to carry a board saying Dimple ice-cream, and I guess it used to sell the ice-cream as well for some time, but we never bought it again. And somehow, I just couldn’t get used to Dimple not being there. And despite Classic’s popularity, something inside me just doesn’t let me patronize this place – in the last 15 years, I must have been inside precisely thrice and that too because I was forced to. Its just…one of those things.
Posted by bhavinj at June 16, 2005 11:18 PM
Comments
Bhavin,
I was amazed at seeing Dimple in NY as well! (Last time I was there they had written in bracktes next to the name: From Matunga, Mumbai!).
Classic - see I went to Bosco with Classic being there for nearly 9 years of my school life. So it evokes the same feeling that Dimple did for you. Everytime I go back, I never miss not going there!
Rahul
Posted by: Rahul at August 11, 2005 05:17 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)