Three years after the South Indian Concerns, a restaurant and famous hub for all South Indians in Matunga, pulled down its shutters, Arjun Ganapathy, a journalist with Tamil daily Dinakaran, says he is still nostalgic. “Back in the 1990s, when I used to travel to Bombay from Chennai, my stay was always in Concerns. Here I could take a room and get two meals for less than Rs 1,000 per day. Besides, the aroma of rich filter coffee wafting in the air every morning, the traditional meals served on plantain leaves and classic South Indian dishes, used to keep me close to home.”

Concerns, which began in 1938 as a boarding and eating house for bachelors, fast became the favourite of visiting South Indians, who could get rooms and meals for just Rs 17. Meals were traditional Tamil delicacies like vatakozambu (a tamarind-based sambhar), parupu podi (a power made of dals) rice, rasam, sambhar, and moru (buttermilk), found nowhere else in the city.

According to Gopala Sundaresan, chairman and managing director of Concerns, which still runs a hotel service but for much higher rates, “Till the 1980s Matunga was called ‘bachelor’s paradise’ and Concerns was the place that housed them. However, later as the share business grew in the city, it became the hub for a lot of businessmen and investors. A number of illegal roadside stalls selling cheap masala dosas and idlis began to flourish. Concerns couldn’t keep up and we had to shut the restaurant in 2005.”

For many like Ganapathy, the closing down of Concerns is the ending of an era. “Today everything has changed in Mumbai. We don’t get the familiar homely feeling here anymore. It’s all professional,” rues Ganapathy.

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