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The Village experience!

The Village experience: From a sparesly populated dot on the Mumbai map to a great township, Thakur Village has it all

You could have knocked me down with a feather in 2002, if you had told me I would taste the Village experience by relocating to Thakur Village, from Pali Hill in Bandra. It was an unbelievable matrix of partially dressed roads lined with a smattering of a dozen odd shops. You had to hop across the Western Express Highway to Thakur Complex to frequent a salon, supermart and sabzi mandi.

We moved here in April 2002. We were on family way, needed space and were getting pigeon holes in the same amount in Bandra. It was like severing an umbilical cord, moving away from the auto-infested lanes of Bandra, lined with TDR projects. Yet we wanted amenities like play space for kids, a clubhouse, swimming pool… within the building premises. I didn’t want to stand in line at a public park to secure a turn on the swing for my child. So we moved into a big 3BHK in Oberoi Gardens. Call it the quintessential Village experience!

Cut to 2006. Life has changed here, and like how. Apna Thakur da Village has reinvented itself as a contemporary version of Malgudi, complete with the statue of da Thakur in the Village square, Thakur Cinema standing majestically a stone’s throw from the burgeoning Thakur College , Thakur Vidya Mandir and Thakur Public School.

There is a profusion of stalwarts — DMart, Coffee Day, Planet M, Pizza Hut, L’oreal snip salon, Baskin and Robbins, Kaya skin clinic, Dominos, Naturals, Ramas, Sify cyber cafes… dotting the Village. New shops pop up every fortnight . Some reinvent, others relocate. We moved here to move far from the madding crowd. Yet the crowd has followed us. Thakur Village is a Sunday destination for many, with the Evershine dream park attracting hordes from neighbouring locales like Borivali and Dahisar.

All in all, even though the Village stands at a risk of morphing into another shopping destination like Lokhandwala in Andheri West, I think staying in Thakur Village is a satisfying experience . We are two minutes off the Highway, connectivity is not an issue. There is 24 hours water supply, Tata Power feeds our sockets at home with electricity, I can see a lush manicured garden and a limpid blue pool when I look out of the window. Even the paanwallah delivers the paan at home

Shilpi Madan for Economic Times

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