Matungaiites Everywhere

This was published on 26 Oct 20o6 in the Mumbai Mirror and on my site www.manfrommatunga.com. Here is the archive link.

How things have changed! Just a few years ago, Diwali was all about Chopda Pujans, fire-crackers and the rounds of Saal-Mubaraks on Bestu-Varas day, to my kakas, nana-nani, mamas, etc. all of whom thankfully live in the Greater Matunga area, in Wadala, Matunga and Sion.

After the Finance Ministry killed the relevance of Chopda Pujans, when April-March was compulsorily made the financial year for all businesses, things started changing. More and more, Diwali time became “holiday time”, even during the Diwali and Bestu-Varas days, with many families opting to stay away from the city. 

The problem unfortunately, is that if you go to hill-stations like like Matheran or Mahabaleshwar or even beach-resorts like Goa, you are sure to find “half of Matunga” in these places. Honestly, it is very likely that your neighbor in the next room is from Matunga or has lived there or has in-laws there.

This Diwali, we split up our Diwali holidays into two short trips year, to areas we were absolutely sure would be devoid of all Matunga flavor. 

The first trip was sans-kids, to the Maldives, where we landed up being the only Indian couple at the Taj Coral Reef and unlike the experience in most other tourist places, we were actually over-pampered by the predominantly Indian staff, as compared to the British, Italian and Japanese tourists. Talk of reverse discrimination! And of course, the corals and snorkelling were awesome.

Then, during the Diwali days, we decided to go off to Ahmedabad (at the airport alone, we met two Matunga families on their way to Goa...jeez!). On Sunday, the “dhoka” day, we went to Goyal’s water park (apparently better than Water Kingdom), which was virtually empty and the kids had a blast. In the evening though, we found Vishala to be very crowded, I guess, because locals just love eating out, Though fun, Vishala is now obviously a tourist-focused experience, with the puppet-shows, the "garba" area and of course the cross-legged eating on leaves with earthen crockery, but with average Gujju food. With another “average” experience at a very popular “thali” place on Monday, I realized that though people love eating out, this city still has a long-way to go in terms of the quality of the food and the fine-dining experience.

Overall though, Ahmedabad has become an amazingly vibrant city, both in the inner-city “pol” areas, as well as in the newer parts. And despite our views about him in Mumbai, the locals think the world of Mr. Narendra Modi and give him full credit for this development. 

The last evening was topped off with Don, which we all unanimously thought, (despite Khalid Mohamed and his colleagues) is far better than the old Don, which we had all seen the night before, both to refresh our memories and for the kids. The old Don honestly is a B-grade, badly edited and directed film, but is great fun because of AB, Pran and the dialogues, while the new Don…well, it just rocks! I wish I could write a review for all the contrarians.

So, once in a while, it is nice to be away from Matunga, both column-wise and physically. And the trick I’ve realized, is to either go away to really exotic destinations or to other big cities, which are themselves a little “empty”, because their inhabitants too have decided to go away to other touristy places, and yet are large enough to make it unlikely that you’ll meet another Matungaiite!