Man From Matunga

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October 11, 2005

ABC to PhD

This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.

Quiz Question: In which part of Mumbai, do you get four major institutions, meeting at one crossroad? Answer: Matunga.

Don Bosco, Khalsa College, VJTI and UDCT, all meet at a cross-road, which would deserve its own two-page spread, in any coffee-table book on famous cross-roads in India.

Before I proceed, its high time I added one more term to our vocabulary. “Greater Matunga”. Greater Matunga is the area from just before the Dadar circle, all the way upto Sion circle, with Matunga in the centre, encompassing parts of Wadala, Dadar and Sion. Not only do these areas have a connected history, they all share the same Matunga mentality.

Since I work in Girgaum, a large number of my colleagues believe I live somewhere in South Mumbai and express surprise at my knowledge of Matunga and the Greater Matunga area. But honestly, if you’ve lived your entire educational life in this area, if “Dadar to Sion” was your entire world for 21 years, wouldn’t you know the roads, the shops, the theatres, the gardens, the paanwallas, the doodhwala bhaiyyas, the railway stations, track crossings, the lover’s lanes, the speed-breakers and the traffic signal timings like the back of your hand?

And the funny thing is, it is actually possible to live your entire life in this area, without having to move out at all, except for social and entertainment purposes. You can live in the Greater Matunga area, go to school here as well as to junior college and if it happens, as it did in my case, even to a post-graduate college in this part of the world. Two major engineering institutes (UDCT and VJTI) and the second best medical college in the city (LTMMC, part of Sion Hospital) are to be found in this area, among other institutes of higher learning.

It must have been the cheap availability of land in the past that led to so many educational institutions starting in this area. The Greater Matunga area has a disproportionate number of schools and colleges, compared to the population that resides here. Starting with J B Vachha beyond Five Gardens, past St. Joseph’s and Auxilium, all the way upto Our Lady of Good Counsel in Sion, schools in this area comes in all shapes, sizes and budgets.

Upto about 10-15 years ago, kids would come from outside Matunga, to study in the Matunga schools. However, in the last decade or so, there has been a dramatic turn-around, where, despite the large number of schools in this area, a good number of kids go outside Matunga, to schools like Bombay Scottish, AVM, Dhirubhai Ambani, some even traveling all the way upto Mazgaon to St. Mary’s. The reason? One word…ICSE.

There is just one ICSE school in Matunga…Shishuvan. The rest are all SSC schools and today with SSC schools being considered inferior to ICSE schools, the so-called, well-heeled and connected Matungaens, follow the herd to the ICSE schools outside the area. To the extent that kids last year, were uprooted from many Matunga schools and put in a new school in Mahim, just beyond Bombay Scottish, despite this school being absolutely new, with no background, no track record and no history whatsoever.

However, when ICSE boys refuse to date SSC girls (the latest one from the rumor mills), and may in the future refuse to marry them as well, can you really blame parents for wanting the ICSE label for their children?

Posted by bhavinj at October 11, 2005 07:14 PM

Comments

Posted by: V.Mahadevan at January 9, 2006 05:10 PM

Posted by: K.Vaidyanathan at January 26, 2006 05:26 PM

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