Dabbawala in Mumbai
Mumbai's famous dabbawalla or tiffin wallas carry the lunches made by the wives of suburban commuters to their husbands working in down town offices. At 19 373 persons per km2 Mumbai is India's most densely populated city with a huge flow of traffic. Because of this lengthy commutes to workplaces are common with many workers traveling by train. Instead of going home for lunch or paying for a meal in a cafŽ many office workers have a cooked meal sent by a caterer who delivers it to them as well essentially cooking and delivering the meal in lunch boxes and then having the lunch boxes collected and re-sent the next day. This is usually done for a monthly fee. The meal is cooked in the morning and sent in lunch boxes carried by dabbawalas who have a complex association and hierarchy across the city. A collecting dabbawala usually on bicycle collects dabbas from homes or more often from the dabba makers (who actually cook the food). The dabbas have some sort of distingushing mark on them such as a color or symbol. The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place where he and other collecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into groups. The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains with markings to identify the destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings include the rail station to unload the boxes and the building address where the box has to be delivered. At each train station boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala who delivers them. The empty boxes after lunch are again collected and sent back to the respective houses. The word Dabbawala in Hindi when literally translated means one who carries a box . Dabba means a box (usually a cylindrical tin or aluminium container) while wala is a suffix denoting a doer of the preceding word[1]. The closest meaning of the Dabbawala in English would be the lunch box delivery man .
Size: 4800px × 3193px
Location: Mumbai Maharashtra India
Photo credit: © Jason Florio / Aurora Photos / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: bombay, carry, commuters, food, india, lunch, maharashtra, mumbai, office, service, tiffin, trains, wallah, workers
