Dabba

Every day I get one of these bad boys delivered to my office for lunch. Inside, generally, is 4 rotis, about a cup of boiled white rice, a bag of (yellow, usually) dal, which is, on occasion, thick and delicious dal makhani, and some sort of aloo dish (aloo ghobi, aloo mutter, etc), and a random treat which I'm gonna call the "wild card". The wild card is sometimes a small samosa, but sometimes cute -- on Valentines day it was a heart-shaped potato patty.

The word "dabba" just means "can," but the guy who delivers the food is called the "dabbawala," the "Can Man." I heard somewhere that 4,000,000 people in Bombay get dhaba for lunch every day. Most of the women who cook the food in the dabba are Gujarati housewives, who make the lunch, wrap it up, and give it to the first dhaba wala in line, who generally transports it, in bicycle rickshaw, to the train station. Another dabba wala picks it up there, and accompanies the load of dabbas to the destination train station (each dabbawala serves a certain, manageable area of the city). At that station, another dabbawala picks it up and bicycles it to the various offices where it goes.

Keep in mind that most of the people involved in the distribution chain are illiterate and depend on dots, dashes, and other icons for the labels on the dabbas. Customers generally cancel their dabba on a day when they're having a business lunch, or if they're out of town for a few days, and they call the night before. With all these changes, and all the various last-minute adjustments, the dabbawalas achieve "Six-Sigma" accuracy, meaning that their service is provided with a .001% rate of error. Major Indian companies come to them for advice and training on staff management. My own dabba has never disappointed.