The news cut the muggy June air like a knife. We had just been privy the information that one of Mulund’s oldest Udipi restaurants was on the threshold of selling off a section of its prime space to a fast food chain.

This kind of stuff happens everyday, right? And yes it was happening with alarming regularity. This development wasn’t a sudden occurrence in the once-quaint, culturally-rich suburb that Mulund used to be, The eastern suburb has been in the grip of an unchecked construction for over a decade now. Nostalgic mumbo-jumbo or otherwise, it reflects a blueprint that’s been replicated in most of our suburbs.