Cutting down on plastic usage is a goal with many worthy reasons. We have been trying to cut down on plastic when we carry our lunch with us to school or work. When I was a kid, lunch boxes were metal but I don't see them any more. A few years ago I saw tiffins at the local National Wholesale Liquidators store (now since closed down) and bought some. We have been able to eliminate using plastic for carrying lunch - no plastic containers, no plastic wrap, no plastic lunch box. And the tiffin retains heat so hot food is at least warm when it is time for lunch.
My kids had no resistance to the tiffins and at this point they have received enough positive comments from a variety of people - kid and adult - that they think the tiffins are cool. I have had two of the tall ones from National Wholesale Liquidators that have problems with their lid - it screws on but it doesn't stop. I also have had two that worked fine. The small one has a clamp lid. National Wholesalers sold the tall one for about $15 and both are stainless steel.
Newly Frugal Indians Revive Tiffin Tradition
Homemade Lunch Delivery Surges
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 10, 2009
MUMBAI -- Outside one of this city's busiest railway stations, Vilesh Shinde balanced 50 metal containers on a wooden board atop his head and rushed into the thick morning traffic, sprinting through the financial district to deliver home-cooked meals to his newest customers: young Indian professionals.
Shinde is one of Mumbai's approximately 5,000 dabbawalas, or lunch deliverymen. Dressed in white caps and starched chef's smocks, bearing foot-tall lunch pails known as tiffins, the fast-moving dabbawalas are a symbol of old India who not long ago appeared to be an endangered species.
With incomes rising and the Indian economy rapidly growing, sociologists predicted the demise of the dabbawala. That is, until the global financial crisis in the past year caused many middle-class urban Indians to return to the tiffin, shunning the city's more expensive restaurants and cafes in favor of the way their grandparents used to eat.
For about $6 a month, the dabbawalas collect lunches from white-collar workers' homes in the city's vast outskirts and deliver them, still hot, directly to their desks in the bustling city center. The business dates back 125 years, to a time when British colonial administrators wanted homemade meals they knew their foreign stomachs could safely handle.
For office workers feeling the economic pinch, Indian women's magazines and talk shows are recommending the dabbawala over debt.
"There's so many more tiffins these days. We can't be late and let down the newcomers. So we have to work really quickly," said Shinde, 32, a third-generation dabbawala whose clientele has doubled in the past three months. "I thought about computer classes. But I stayed with this. I heard there were no jobs. Plus, my customers are always happy to see me."
In the late 1990s, India's burgeoning economy unleashed an explosion of street-food stalls, air-conditioned cafes and international fast-food chains. Suddenly, young Indians wanted lattes with their lentils. The chains successfully Indianized just about every cuisine imaginable: Think masala muffins or McDonald's Chicken Maharaja Mac, two grilled chicken patties with smoke-flavored mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun. Going out to lunch became a status symbol among India's emerging middle class.
Now such spending seems reckless. The engine is slowing, and to many people here, that's not all bad.
"The dabbawalas are part of a culture, an era in India, where frugality and an authentic taste of home were very serious virtues," said Harish Shetty, a prominent psychiatrist in Mumbai. "We all predicted that this would die out. What young person would want to be a dabba in the heat and traffic? What young person wants to bring their lunch to work in India's version of a brown bag? But we were wrong. Now in times of recession, we are finding the old ways still work. That's very comforting."
But the dabbawala revival is not just a matter of rupee-pinching. The lunch deliveryman has recently become a pop-culture icon, with a cult status built on nostalgia for old-time Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. A retro-looking dabbawala appears on coffee mugs and coasters. Psychedelic posters show a white-uniformed dabbawala dreaming of hundreds of tiffins, which swirl around his Gandhi topi, or trademark white cap. There's even an online video game in which players are given a map of an Indian city and must deliver food on time.
In 2006, when more and more urban professionals were dining out or eating lunch at corporate cafeterias, Manish Tripathi, a software engineer, set up a Web site and text-messaging service to boost business for dabbawalas. He was quickly adopted as an honorary dabbawala, because most of the lunchbox carriers aren't computer literate.
But it wasn't until the economic crisis that tiffin services reported a surge in customers not only in Mumbai, but also in Chennai, New Delhi and Bangalore, especially among university students and young workers at high-tech companies.
"The increase in the clientele of dabbawalas . . . is spreading so quickly because people realize they have to return to wholesome, home-cooked food at cheaper rates," said Mohit Satyanand, an economist. "The tiffin is a survivor. It's trendy again."
In Chennai, Geetha Mehta, a housewife-turned-caterer, has become a national celebrity, featured on TV food programs for starting a service that provides an evening tiffin of healthful snacks to students and white-collar employees working into the night.
"We thought these tiffins were for our grandparents. But these days, beggars can't be choosers. Because we have a monthly allowance, we eat out much less than before," said Apurva Yadav, 19, an economics major at Delhi University who recently started using the service.
Though some clients use caterers, in most cases wives, mothers, sisters or domestic cooks assemble lunches for family members in homes throughout Mumbai every morning. Starting at 7 a.m., the dabbawalas pick up the lunches and sort them by destination. From 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., the deliverymen travel the city's railways, the backbone of the system.
Mumbai's railways are so crowded and the commutes so long that the dabbawalas have their own train cars. Outside the stations, they sort the lunchboxes by color-coding or by numbers written on the lids. Then they take off, sometimes on a bicycle, more often on foot.
At 12:15, they take a five-minute chai break, highly unusual in South Asia, where drinking tea is seldom quick. Then they are off again, running through the streets, up and down stairs, delivering lunches.
Sitting in a one-room office in Mumbai, Raghunath D. Medge, president of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust, as the dabbawalas' organization is formally known, proudly displays a gold-plated tiffin on his desk.
"Our dabbawalas don't drink alcohol. They don't waste time. They, in fact, wage a war against time," he said. "You see this modern Mumbai life, it's an artificial life. People miss the old ways. In India, life will change. But the good parts, like a home-cooked lunch, should stay."
Special correspondent Ria Sen in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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