Man From Matunga

This piece is in two parts and will be con­cluded next week.

Up to about 10–15 years ago, the Cir­cle was a sleepy lit­tle place that hardly ever saw any new activity…for the first 25–30 years of my life, a new shop on the Cir­cle or even a lit­tle ren­o­va­tion of an exist­ing shop was con­sid­ered such a major event that the whole of Matunga would come out for a “look-see”.

It was the ATMs that slowly started chang­ing the char­ac­ter of the Cir­cle, fol­lowed by the foodie shops like Gar­nish, a change that has now accel­er­ated to such an extent that a new out­let causes no excite­ment whatsoever.

The lat­est kid on the block is a place called “Dairy Don”, a name that only a nutty Gujju from Gujarat could have come up with. The shop serves sand­wich ice-creams, a “paan” ice-cream and also some­thing called “gotala”. Even though Baskin Rob­bins strug­gled, Nat­u­rals and the soft­ies sold by the Noble broth­ers have always done well and prob­a­bly so will “Dairy Don”, cater­ing to the ever-growing num­bers of Gujjus, who like their cousins in Rajkot, need their sweet-tooth fix on a reg­u­lar basis.

Food is where the most action is.

Nanoomal Bho­j­mal behind Aurora is gone with a blast (its ille­gally stored fire cylin­ders exploded and the build­ing caught fire), replaced by a kinder­garten teach­ing chain. New Yorker’s has been replaced by Only Parathas and Rasna Pan­jab has ren­o­vated its sig­nage. CCD has a new branch oppo­site Matunga sta­tion with a new cof­fee place next to Abbas Library called Capresso, which does a bet­ter job of froth dec­o­ra­tion on the cap­puc­cino than CCD. And, Ahar serv­ing coastal food now has a new fam­ily area with a sep­a­rate entrance. Luck­ily, Fu Yong still remains…unchanged.

Muthuswamy has opened an out­let oppo­site the Matunga station…unfortunately, the food just doesn’t com­pare to the stuff he serves dur­ing par­ties and func­tions. Koolar has become even more iconic, being the only “Irani” restau­rant left within miles, while all the Udipis con­tinue to do great business.

And among all these, Varun is steadily doing bet­ter and bet­ter with his home made thin-crust piz­zas and pas­tas, serv­ing a select set of known cus­tomers, friends and family.

There also seems to be a sud­den erup­tion of par­lors and salons. While Enrich has been around for some time, there is now Adorn next to Foto Cir­cle, one other shop next to Nat­ural ice-cream and Diva behind Aurora cin­ema, while Star con­tin­ues to han­dle the bar­gain seek­ing clients.

Then there are the shiny shops in the new build­ings on the stretch from the Cir­cle to the Sta­tion. While Pra­manik and Milap have been around for some time, IIFA (like Alfa in San­tacruz) has become the new store to go to for any­thing and every­thing you need at home, with SIA across the road pro­vid­ing rea­son­ably inex­pen­sive branded jew­elry.  Only when it comes to big brand cloth­ing and shoe stores, does the Cir­cle still seem to lag behind even places like Parel, Levi’s per­haps being the only major brand to have an out­let in Matunga.

The road­side ven­dors have increased. The bhel­wala in the lane behind Aurora does more and more busi­ness with each pass­ing day and each week sees yet another pave­ment occu­pied by some or the other vendor.

And to patron­ize all these shops and road­side eater­ies, are the ever-growing num­bers of Gujjus and Kutchis and Mar­waris, with their large and shiny cars, occu­py­ing all the new high-rises and rede­vel­op­ments, along with their ret­inue of chauf­feurs and cooks and maids.

And….