Man From Matunga

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July 05, 2005

Matunga, What's That!

This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.

As a child, I often had to visit a cousin, living on Napean Sea Road. Once that cousin had friends visiting.
“Where do you live?”
“King’s Circle, Matunga”
“Oh…..”
“Uh….”
“Where’s that?”
“After Dadar and before Sion.”
“Sion comes when we go to Lonavla, doesn’t it?”
“It’s the circle that comes before”
“Oh…”
There was a pregnant pause during which they tried to digest the fact that someone actually lived in such places. For the sake of gastric stability, I was then promptly ignored and left to my own devices.

I remembered this, during a meeting last Saturday in Powai. We were discussing a suburban project, when I questioned its usefulness. My colleague immediately compared me to another senior professor, who questioning the viability of the project, had told him, “but Mumbai ends at Mahim.” Which, I told him, was much better than “Mumbai ends at Worli”, that a couple of my friends practicing in Girgaum, keep saying.

It then struck me how Matunga can be a less than 4 minutes blip on the car radar, a blurry 1.5km montage of buildings and shops, nestled between Dadar and Sion. That morning, short of time, I drove drive directly to Powai from Girgaum, without stopping off at home. From the Ruia college signal, in three minutes flat, I swung past King’s Circle, stopping momentarily at the Brahmanwada signal, from where in another half-minute, I was past Gandhi Market, and out of Matunga. Compare this to Powai. Though the drive from the Sion to the LBS Marg flyovers, took just 17 minutes, it took another 35 minutes just to reach the Renaissance. Powai just seemed to go on and on and on…

So, I am not sure I blame the “South Mumbai” types. Unless you have relatives or friends in Matunga or love Udipi food or have studied in VJTI or UDCT, there really is no reason to know anything about the place, except that it comes on the way to Lonavla.

Rarely though, you can get pleasantly surprised. A few years ago, Dad’s friend invited us for dinner to Bombay Brasserie, in Worli. They stayed on Carmicheal road and his son and daughter-in-law had just returned for good, after 7-8 years in the US. We went reluctantly, not knowing what level of snootiness to expect. At the table, we were all trying hard to find common-ground, when the daughter-in-law mentioned that she used to live at Five Gardens, part of the Matunga mentality coverage. When she and my wife realized that they were both Vachhaites, and that too, just a couple of years apart, they promptly sat down next to each other and gossiped the evening away. And the rest of us managed to amuse ourselves at their expense.

Plus c’a change, plus c’est la meme chose. Twenty five years after the Nepean Sea Road incident, at South Mumbai events, the mention of Matunga as a place of residence, still manages to raise an eyebrow. Sometimes, both…, and I am sure the rest as well, if we had more.

Posted by bhavinj at July 5, 2005 06:44 PM

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