What are the social histories that structure some of Mumbai’s iconic fares and spots? In this excerpt from the chapter ‘Country of the Monkey-Faced Nut’ from her book In the Beginning there was Bombay Duck, Pronoti Datta attempts to find out.
Nearly every account on Mumbai’s food history mentions its inhabitants. From the Kolis, who have been fishing in the city’s waters since much before recorded history, early settlers such as the Pathare Prabhus, to the people who poured into the developing city in the centuries of British imperialism.
Their contributions are widely canonised in the city; migrants from the Kanara coast gave the city the Udupi restaurant; Parsis introduced diners to Persian- and Gujarati-influenced dishes; Iranis served this food in their iconic cafes; Muslim communities made the neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazaar into a gastronome’s pilgrimage.
Rather than seeing these histories as a shorthand for multiculturalism in the city, Pronoti Datta’s ‘In the Beginning there was Bombay Duck’ (2025) probes its foundations further—including the origins of Matunga, one of the first planned neighbourhoods of Mumbai.
Since its inception, markets and restaurants have sprung up to largely serve the population of Brahmin migrants from southern India, some of the first settlers in Matunga. The demand for native ingredients and flavours eventually led to the emergence of several shops and establishments, upheld today by vast economic activity and migrant labour hailing from multiple states.
Read the excerpt below from the chapter Country of the Monkey-Faced Nut, in which Pronoti explores the distinctly Brahminical character of Matunga’s origins—including its impact on the Matunga market—probing the tastes and preferences that structure these places, the processes through which they are institutionalised, and how that shapes the ways in which we understand a city’s food.
The “native” city, especially parts of Fort and immediate neighbourhoods such as Bhendi Bazaar and Nagpada, was a nest of people and cramped, airless housing. The conditions were ripe for the spread of disease. To avoid another epidemic [in the wake of the plague that struck in 1896], the colonial government decided to develop new neighbourhoods on land reclaimed by the sea and in the thinly populated places north of the native city. The plan was to build sanitary housing and construct roads spanning east and west that would allow the sea air to ventilate the city. They started with the Dadar-Matunga-Sion area, which, in the late nineteenth century, was a swathe of paddy and vegetable fields and plantations farmed by Kolis, Agris, Kunbis, and Bhandaris.
The idea was to be an anti-native town, a neighbourhood with wide boulevards lined with spacious, well-ventilated housing, loosely modelled along the lines of suburbs developing in Europe. In a fascinating study on the genesis of Matunga, Nikhil Rao writes that the Bombay Improvement Trust, an organisation composed in the aftermath of the plague of colonial administrators and the local elite that ran the Bombay Municipal Corporation, envisioned a mixed-class suburb with chawls as well as cottages and bungalows for the middle-class and the wealthy. But as bungalow-living seemed too expensive and indulgent to the emerging middle class, they were never built. Instead, in the 1930s, three-storey (ground plus two floors) buildings came up on plots in Dadar, Matunga, and Sion. The mass construction of the buildings at reasonable prices was enabled by the newly available reinforced cement concrete. These low-rise structures, many of which are wonderful examples of Art Deco architecture, deliver much of the neighbourhood’s charm.
Until the arrival of the apartment block, both the labour class and the emerging cadre of white collar workers, lived in chawls. These multi-storey buildings typically have one- or two-room units that open on to a balcony that runs the length of the facade. Common toilets are either in another block or at the end of the corridor on each floor. Chawls lack privacy but at the time, privacy was a western notion. For migrants pouring into the city, the chawl offered the atmosphere of community reminiscent of their villages and hometowns. Chawls were also cheap, allowing people of modest means to live in the city and remit money home.
Matunga’s attraction was the low-cost apartment. It had one or two bedrooms, a toilet and bathroom within the house, a living room, a kitchen, and an area where clothes could be dried and dishes washed. Single jobbing men could now think of bringing their families to the city, of living with their wives and children instead of fellow single men in cramped chawl rooms.
The first settlers in Matunga’s new apartment blocks were South Indian Brahmins, who had migrated from Madras Presidency and who worked as clerks in offices in the Fort area. Tamil Brahmins were predominant within this cohort. (The other historic Tamil settlement in Mumbai is in Dharavi, a vast slum and a hive of economic activity. The place is full of small businesses that produce kilos of idli and vada daily. The food is sold to breakfasting Mumbaikars by itinerant sellers.) They were driven to Bombay by the challenges of sustaining families on rural incomes, and by the anti-Brahmin sentiment being whipped up by the Justice Party in the 1920s and 1930s. Brahmins dominated government jobs in the Madras Presidency, and the Party petitioned authorities for greater representation of non-Brahmins.
The promise of a familiar way of life, even if it was more heterogenous and multicultural than the lives they had left, drew more South Indian migrants to Matunga.
South Indian Brahmins coming to Bombay were snapped up by companies looking for clerks almost as soon as they got off the train. They were in demand as they had an English education; many knew typing and shorthand, which were musts for clerical jobs. A profile of Matunga in The Times of India narrates the experience of a South Indian gentleman, who stepped off the train at Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus), crossed the road to The Times of India office, inquired about vacancies, demonstrated his typing and shorthand skills in a test, and left for Matunga, where he had friends, with a job in hand.
Gradually, a South Indian culture, decidedly Brahmanical in flavour, emerged in Matunga. The promise of a familiar way of life, even if it was more heterogenous and multicultural than the lives they had left, drew more South Indian migrants to Matunga. By the 1930s, there were three major cultural centres in the neighbourhood: Sangeetha Sabha, Shanmukhananda Sabha, and Indian Fine Arts Circle. The three were fused in 1952 to create the Shanmukhananda Fine Arts and Sangeetha Sabha. The temples built by the burgeoning community became anchors of neighbourhood culture. The Asthika Samaj, a statuesque Ram temple on Bhandarkar Road, started with a portrait of the deity in a community hall in 1923. The South Indian Bhajana Samaj on Telang Road was founded in 1927 as a place for devotees to sing bhajans. The construction of Sri Sankara Mattham on Shradhanand Road was completed in 1978. But the temple’s genesis lay in a Vedic studies class started in 1939 by the scholar Subramania Sastrigal.
Their demand created the perfect conditions for a fiercely vegetarian South Indian settlement.
Single Brahmin men in Matunga often ate home-style meals provided by messes that strictly followed Hindu dietary rules. The South Indian Consumer Society and Model Cooperative Hostel Society dished up cooked food and sold South Indian provisions and utensils. Rao has a wonderful anecdote that illustrates just how seriously food was taken. These two societies were dominated by Iyers from Palakkad, who, having absorbed Kerala’s kitchen conventions over generations, cooked in coconut oil. This didn’t go down well with Brahmins from Thanjavur and Tirunelvelli, who had been weaned on food cooked in groundnut oil. In 1935, Thanjavur Iyers founded South Indian Concerns, an establishment that prepared meals just like home.
Shopping for ingredients was done at the market near Matunga [railway] station. It’s still a cornucopia of fresh produce, including items peculiar to South Indian cuisines, such as various kinds of banana, bamboo shoot, and limes from Kerala. The shops outside the vegetable market sell everything from Kanchipuram saris and filter coffee makers to South Indian snacks and condiments. Rao writes that before the neighbourhood was laid out, the Bombay Improvement Trust had earmarked a plot for the market. Gujarati Bhatias living in the area strenuously demanded that there be no meat or fish sold in the market as residents were largely vegetarian. Their demand created the perfect conditions for a fiercely vegetarian South Indian settlement.
The entrepreneurial Kanara migrants spotted an opportunity in the growing population of South Indians that needed to be fed in the absence of their families. Restaurant owners were Brahmins themselves, which was reassuring for Brahmin diners. It might have niggled some that many of the restaurant owners were GSBs (Gaud Saraswat Brahmins), one of the few fish-eating Brahmin communities. But their restaurant kitchens were strictly vegetarian.
Moreover, to survive in a multicultural city, compromises were necessary and they were freely made. An exception to the cluster of famous Matunga eateries is Mani’s Lunch Home, which is owned, not by a Kanara native but a Palakkad Tamil Brahmin family. It’s famous for its annual Onam sadya and Kerala-style staples.
This is an excerpt from ‘‘In the Beginning There Was Bombay Duck: A Food History of Mumbai’ (2025) by Pronoti Datta, published by Speaking Tiger. Excerpted with permission from the author and publisher.
Bio: Pronoti Datta is a writer, communications specialist, and former journalist living in Bombay (minus cats or children). She has worked at The Times of India and Time Out Mumbai, and her writing has appeared in publications such as The New Statesman, Roads & Kingdoms, Mint Lounge, The Hindu and Vogue India. Her first novel, Half-Blood, was published in 2022.
