INDIA- BOMBAY
LUNCHBOX May 2002 DUR 10'10" MUMBAI LANDSCAPES AND STREET SCENES BIKAJI RIDING HIS MOTORBIKE, DELIVERING FOOD MRS LALAPORIA COOKING IN KITCHEN DABBAWALLAS SORTING LUNCH BOXES BUSY MUMBAI TRAIN DABBAS BEING DELIVERED IN OFFICE BLOCK DABBAS BEING EATEN IN OFFICE AND BEING DELIVERED MUMBAI STREET SCENES MUMBAI RESTAURANT MUMBAI STREET SCENES |
A muggy monsoon dawn in Mumbai, it's the brief quiet
before the daily storm of activity sweeps across India's commercial capital.
This city of seventeen million is infamous for its crowds and its chaos, but
Mumbai is also renowned for its meals on wheels. Whatever the weather, Bikaji
religiously does his morning rounds. While many people are barely finishing
breakfast, he's collecting lunches for desk-bound workers. He's the nexus
between home and office, husband and housewife, mother and son. SYNC MRS LALAPORIA: Mrs Lalaporia puts the notion
of a cooked lunch to shame. SYNC MRS LALAPORIA: She's been making long distance lunches for nearly
half a century, first for her now retired husband and then for her son, Menosh. SYNC MRS LALAPORIA: And no, Menosh Is not a
schoolboy, he's forty three and married but his working wife certainly won't
make Menosh lunch and don't even suggest that he
might step into the kitchen. SYNC MENOSH: But the problem for domestically challenged Menosh is that he leaves for work long before even the
onions have started frying. So somehow mother and son need to be united.
Enter the mighty tiffin or Dabba, the great Indian
lunchbox. But a Dabba is not much
use without a Walla, together they make one of Mumbai's most remarkable
institutions, the Dabbawalla. Since 1890, a closed community has been providing a
low tech, lunch delivery service. Bikaji picks up
about a dozen Dabbas and brings them to the local station.
Here they are sorted according to an intricate system of codes, colours and numbers and passed on to the next stage in
the network. Thanks to trust and cooperation, Dabbas
are passed from one team to the next, zigzagging across the city. The system is all the more ingenious when you
consider most of Mumbai's five thousand Dabbawallas
can barely read or write and they must contend with one of the worlds most
congested civic infrastructures. Yet there success rate is astounding, the Dabbawallas get more than 99.99% of their deliveries
right. But, despite a strike rate even the don would have admired, their days
may be numbered. What began as a service for British Administrators,
too pretentious to be seen carrying their lunch, peaked in the 1950s and is
today slowly petering out. Still, 150,000 workers in this concrete jungle
will today get their home cooked meal on time. Forbes magazine rates the Dabbawalla's
productivity on a par with the biggest global corporations and for a monthly
fee of just six dollars, the likes of Menosh think
they are a legend In his lunchtime. SYNC MENOSH: SYNC INTERVIEWER: SYNC MENOSH: SYNC INTERVIEWER: SYNC MENOSH: In a city with as many food rules as there are
religions, matching the Dabba to the desk is much
more than just pleasing fussy eaters. If a Muslim’s beef biryani got mixed up
with a Jain's strictly vegetarian Daal and rice, it
wouldn't be pretty. But, reliability is not the Dabbawallas
downfall. As more Mumbai women work, fewer are cooking, the likes of Menosh know that his mum's lunches can't last forever. SYNC MENOSH: SYNC WOMAN: SYNC WOMAN: And the demise of the housewife is only part of the
story, the opening up of the Indian economy over the last decade has also
changed the face of Mumbai. With more money to spend, India's expanding
middle class is venturing out and generating a new brand of food consumer. SYNC WOMAN: The ubiquitous global food chains are grabbing some
of that market but so too are a new flavour of
savvy local eateries. SYNC RESTAURANT OWNER: Dosa Diner is a new chain selling funky Indian food but which
is not too adventurous. SYNC RESTAURANT OWNER: SYNC INTERVIEWER: SYNC RESTAURANT OWNER: For Mumbai's Hindu Nationalist leaders and self-appointed
cultural custodians, at stake is much more than just the fate of the Dabbawallas. They fear the very fabric of Indian society
is unravelling, that the sacred bond between husband and wife may soon be
broken. SYNC PRAMOD MALWAKA: Yet the humble Dabbawallas
seem the most at ease, they're convinced they'll keep earning their 200
dollars a month for some time to come. After all, they have the union to look
after them, the honourable company of Tiffin box carriers. After lunch, as the Dabbawallas
reverse their morning journey returning the empty Tiffins,
it's hard to imagine Mumbai without them. Their city may be changing and
demand for this extraordinary cooperative may be diminishing, but the Dabbawallas believe their culinary courier service will
survive or else the mighty Indian family might not. |