Counting Down to 90 - Week 1555 - The Canopied Lanes of Matunga
Matunga has so many lanes with full canopies formed by the trees on both sides of the road.
The Concept Explained
Bhavin Jankharia
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It started with this tree outside my study window. It was 7 in the morning and the flowers of the yellow gulmohar tree had partly carpeted the concrete…it was wonderful. I went down for my walk and shot this picture of the tree in full bloom with the flower petals on the road.
I then turned to my right and standing a little further away in the middle of the road, I looked down the lane where I live, Manikrao Lotlikar Marg and shot this picture of a short canopy just next to my house.
Bijal and I started our usual weekend walk, by first taking a right on Rd No 1A, which ends opposite Sahakari Bhandar, then a left on Road No 10 and then a left on Marubai Gaondevi Mandir Road. That road has a canopy, thanks to the large trees from the Don Bosco ground. I took this picture from the opposite direction.
We then made a right back onto Manikrao Lotlikar Marg and turned around to take this picture, showing a canopy formed by the trees from both sides, from those inside Don Bosco and the ones inside and outside the buildings opposite the school.
We then turned right into Puranmal Sanghani road, which hardly has any trees, then straight to Road 32 and a left on H R Mahajani Road, which parallels R P Masani and Adenwala Roads. (If you want to know more about these names and lanes, I wrote a piece, “Lost in the Mist of Time” in Mar 2013). This is a quiet leafy lane with a lovely canopy thanks to the trees from VJTI meeting the trees from the buildings opposite.
Bhavin Jankharia
We then continued our walk through the lanes of Five Gardens. Some of the lanes have a good tree cover, but very few have full canopies. We went past DPYA school and then made a right onto A B Homavazir Road, which is also called “Lover’s Lane” and again found a lovely canopy mainly because of the trees from the garden on our left (Manoranjan or Panchgani Gardens).
The next canopy we found was along Adenwala Road. Though it is a wide arterial road, it has trees on both sides that reach over and touch each other like lovers wanting to kiss all the time.
Matunga has always been green. I wrote a piece “How Green is my Matunga” in 2005 and followed it up with another one “Aamchi Mumbai” in the Mumbai Mirror thanks to Jehangir Sorabjee’s pictures from his book, Above Bombay and then topped it with another post called Above King’s Circle, when I started the short-lived blog matunga.me. Matunga and its by-lanes and roads have a terrific green cover, which hasn’t really changed much.
Bhavin Jankharia
Bhavin Jankharia
Bhavin Jankharia
Having lived all my life in a 1+3 building, first on the 3rd floor, then on the 1st and now on the 2nd, I find it extremely difficult to understand how one can live in high-rises that soar above the trees. Humans are hard-wired to be next to the earth and to smell the flowers and hear the birds in the trees when we wake up in the morning and during sunset. How can we insulate ourselves from all this? Some of the old high-rises without car parking, have the 5th-7th floors next to the tree-tops, but in the new ones with 5-6 floors of car parking, it is only the cars that get the benefit of the trees. Gated complexes are worse because you can never have trees outside your windows, unless you are very, very lucky.
I dread the concept of redevelopment, because with each new wave, humans in Mumbai are forced to live higher and higher, away from the very things that are important for our sanity (trees, birds, flowers).
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