On Wednesday, all the front pages carried a story of the murder-suicide of a family of four at Bhakti Park in Wadala. Apparently, there was a dispute regarding the apartment, and the debt-ridden father killed his wife, his two sons and then himsel When I came home that evening, my children pulled me into their …
Category Archives: Matunga
Lost in the Mist of Time
Google Maps has changed the way we look at our surroundings. This struck me a few months ago, when I was in Bhubaneshwar. I was tracking the route to the hotel on Maps and happened to mention to my hosts how wide and clean Bidyut Marg was. They looked at me puzzled. I showed them …
Something About Nothing (…and A Little for All)
I thought only actors got typecast! After last week’s piece “The Namoral Dilemma”, I received emails, SMSes, blog comments and calls asking why I had written a political piece and deviated from my usual focus on to day-to-day life in Matunga and Mumbai. Seriously! There is a top 5 list of “reasons to hate marathon …
Matunga…in 4 Hours
Finally, last Sunday, about 10 of us in a motley group, did a four hours Matunga precinct walk! The back-story! I did a piece in this column in late October on the history of Matunga and what a possible heritage walk might include. Jehangir challenged me to arrange such a walk and we fixed 23 …
Matunga Convergences, Coincidences and Walks
Multiple incidents this week have almost made me start believing in divine intervention and coincidences (I believe in neither!) and made me write this piece rather than the one on Starbucks and Horniman Circle that I had planned earlier. After checking out Starbucks last Saturday morning (bad caramel machiato, bad service, great decor), I met …
Dog Spas, Tattoo Shops…What Next!
King’s Circle has more than 5 salons…but no spa. You can get shampoos and haircuts and manicures and pedicures, but no ‘spa experience”. And since we are a “middle-class” locality, we don’t even have one of those “ladies” parlors in one of the “quiet” streets. And yet…your dogs and cats…can get a spa experience…in Matunga! …
A Pillar of Matunga…Lost Forever
During the early “Matunga” days of this column, I used to discuss the “Four Pillars of Matunga”. For South Indians, these were/are Giri Stores, Mysore Concerns, Nalli Silk Stores and Anand Bhuvan. For Gujjus and Kutchhis, these were/are, Garnish/Classic, Anand Bhuvan/Udipi/Madras Cafe, Chheda Stores and Pramanik/Milap. Matunga is still a hotch-potch of cultures, though the …
Cream Circle
Voltaire once said, “ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal”. For me, ice-cream is one of those things that would make life incomplete, if it didn’t exist. I remember as a kid, my Mom making ice-cream at home using a manual churning machine that was packed on the outside with salt and ice. …
Active Elders
Oscar Wilde said it so well, “the tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young”. The definition of “elderly” is ever changing. In my 40s, I feel like I am 30 years old (though my body does not always agree) and I assume that in my 70s, I …
Under the (Fly)Over
If you actually remember the lovely restaurant at Kemp’s Corner, which was the precursor to all things Indigo…man, you are old! And no this article is not about that at all! It’s amazing how things can sometimes turn a full circle! A few weeks ago, in response to one of my articles on the deterioration of …