How the Dahba Wallahs Deliver the Tiffin "Lunch" Boxes

On our first day we arrived outside Churchgate Station just in time to see the Dhaba Wallahs arrive.  This is a lunchtime tradition whereby tiffin boxes (aka lunch boxes) are delivered from the suburbs to their recipients in the business district.  The process begins in the home (long after the worker has caught his train to work) when the housewife prepares his lunch and carefully packs it in a series of stacked metal boxes called tiffins.   She places this outside her door where it is picked up by the dhaba wallah and brought to a collection center (aka street corner).  The collected tiffin boxes, many of which are now a days placed inside insulated bags by the homemaker, are packed into special racks and taken by train by other dhaba wallahs to the distribution point at Churchgate Station.   Around 11:30am they come streaming from the station with the boxes.   The delivery dhaba wallahs are waiting.  Each knows which boxes are his and he stacks them into a basket or attaches them to a bicycle and brings them to the lobby where the owner works.   After lunch this process is reversed and by midafternoon each empty tiffin box is returned to the originating homemaker.  For the most part the dhaba wallahs are illiterate and yet they pride themselves on getting the right lunch box to the appropriate recipient and back home again with essentially no errors!  AMAZING!  BTW for those of you wondering about the business plan for this enterprise.   The homemaker pays the Tiffin Collective a fee of about $8-10/month and this is distributed among the dhaba wallahs.

Arriving from the Train Station

Loading the Bicycle to Deliver to the Office

Off to leave the tiffins in a building lobby!