Freerunning
The Lunchbox
Jason Paul explores Mumbai in a freerunning adventure that sees him take on the role of a tiffin delivery person for a day.
Jason Paul, a parkour artist and freerunner from Germany, was in Mumbai recently.
He visited the city as part of a project called The Lunchbox. The project saw him take on the unique role of the dabbawala, a famed tiffin-delivery person intrinsic to the culture of Mumbai city.
Meet the dabbawalas
Dabbawalas at CST Station
© Angshuman Bora
Dabbawalas are a network of people who deliver lunchboxes from family homes to offices across the city. They basically help deliver home-cooked meals for office-goers who need to be in the office before their family has had the chance to prepare their lunch.
The service provided by dabbawalas is not a catering service or an online ordering system; it is purely a food delivery service.
As part of this service, dabbawalas merely pick up a lunchbox at point A and deliver it to point B in the quickest possible time. They also pick up the empty lunchboxes, after the meal has been eaten and deliver it back to the family so it can be prepared for lunch the next day.
Learn about their coding system
Dabbawalas at Dadar station
© Angshuman Bora
Dabbawalas exchange tiffin boxes
© Angshuman Bora
The lunchbox can travel an average of 60-70 kilometres across the city to reach its destination.
Dabbawalas usually make these deliveries in less than four hours. This super-fast delivery is possible because of a complex coding system used by the dabbawalas. The coding system can take up to three months of training to learn.
As part of the system, one lunchbox may be passed among three to five delivery persons before it reaches its final destination. And they use the complex coding system to make sure the lunchboxes are always delivered accurately and on time.
Find out more about the dabbawala network
Overall, a newly-assigned dabbawala can go through one year of training before they get on the job delivering lunchboxes.
It is estimated that dabbawalas make only one mistake in eight million (8,00,000) deliveries. This is quite incredible considering they have a network of 5,000 dabbawalas in Mumbai city and they make 200,000 lunchbox deliveries each day across the network.
Origins of the network
Network of dabbawalas
© Angshuman Bora
The dabbawala service was established by a man named Mahadeo Havaji Bachche in 1890, so it is over a century old.
The very first dabbawala delivery was conducted when an office employee in Mumbai was not able to reach office on time after waiting for his lunch to be prepared at home. So dabbawalas stepped in to pick up his lunch and delivered it to him at his office.
Modes of transport
Dabbawalas travel on foot, bicycle and by train
© Angshuman Bora
The dabbawala system makes use of Mumbai’s famed railway service. The other modes of commute include cycles, hand-drawn carriages and walking. The trains run on electricity and human-power goes into everything else. So dabbawalas never use fossil fuels as part of their delivery system.
Codes they live by
All dabbawalas in Mumbai city are also members of a not-for-profit trust. The trust governs their daily functioning and represents them as a union. All dabbawalas are shareholders in the trust.
All dabbawalas live by five simple mottos in life:
- 1. Work is worship
- 2. Serving people is serving god
- 3. Annadan is Mahadan (food donation is the ultimate donation)
- 4. Time is Money
- 5. Unity is power
Mottos of the dabbawalas
© Angshuman Bora
Check out the official website of Mumbai Dabbawala, and follow them on Instagram (@mumbai_dabbawala) and Twitter (@mumbaidabbawale).