Man From Matunga

The first half of the title and arti­cle appeared last week.

This two-part is the result of an email sent by an ex-Chembur, cur­rent Antop Hill res­i­dent, who keeps com­ing to Matunga on a reg­u­lar basis. An edi­tor her­self, she is frus­trated by the way the busi­nesses have slowly but surely taken over all the pave­ments and empty roads, with the atten­dant lack of civic sense, the con­se­quent filth and rub­bish all around and the traf­fic jams and grid-locks caused by the ever-increasing traf­fic and the ille­gally parked cars.

Take the Sahakari Bhan­dar lane. In the evenings dur­ing peak shop­ping hours, cars and scoot­ers for­get that the lane is one way and drive in whichever direc­tion they want. Some chauffeur-driven cars linger out­side, engines on, obstruct­ing traf­fic on this small two-lane road, while the own­ers go in to get their gro­ceries. The pave­ment next to the store is occu­pied by ille­gal hawk­ers from whom too peo­ple stop and buy veg­eta­bles, thus obstruct­ing the pave­ment, push­ing pedes­tri­ans on to the road and fur­ther adding to the chaos.

It’s all inter­linked. As the num­ber of high-rises have increased, the cars used by them on the Matunga roads have gone up as well and given that the roads in Matunga haven’t changed in size or num­ber over the last few decades despite the fly­over over the Cir­cle, the extra vehi­cles land up clog­ging the small and large roads both, with cars some­times dou­ble and even triple-parked or just cruis­ing along and adding to the logjam.

The area near Pankaj Juice Cen­ter for exam­ple, is a dis­as­ter in the evenings and at night. Cars are parked whichever way, straws and tis­sues are strewn all around and the smell of rot­ten fruit and food is so per­va­sive that even the peren­nial smell of the Mysore Con­cerns cof­fee can’t obvi­ate this. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion is seen on the Matunga Mar­ket road with tons of road­side eater­ies and stalls that just seem to keep mush­room­ing. Try going onto Bhau­daji road from near the Post Office junc­tion and it takes 5 min­utes some­times just to cross the 100 meters or so near the flower-stalls.

Walk­ing on the Cir­cle in the evenings is like nav­i­gat­ing an obsta­cle course. If you like noisy places and crowds, you will have noth­ing to com­plain about. But, if you like to be able to walk at least a few meters with­out being jos­tled, pushed or hav­ing to watch out for scoot­ers and cars that don’t bother to see if you are in their way, then you will have a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem. The pave­ment ven­dors that include both the book-sellers and the vada-pav guys add to the obstruc­tion and leave lit­tle space to walk despite the Cir­cle boast­ing some of the widest foot­paths in this city.

And it goes on. The road out­side Rasna Pan­jab and Clas­sic is tough to nav­i­gate in the evening hours and nights, and in the morn­ings and evenings, the Marubai Gaon­devi tem­ple devo­tees block the road going towards Gar­nish, a sit­u­a­tion made worse by the fact that the pave­ment out­side the tem­ple has also been vir­tu­ally usurped by it.

It’s not too late or dif­fi­cult. If the eater­ies and shops, both small and large, could have a lit­tle more civic sense and if the res­i­dents were to use their cars a lit­tle less and if those dri­ving within Matunga were to fol­low some basic traf­fic rules, we could still stem the rot that is slowly creep­ing in. Matunga is nice place to live in and a good place to come to. Let it not become another Bandra.