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Dabba Wallahs

The Bombay lunch delivery service
IDFA magazine November 98-uk
Every working day, a veritable migration takes place from the suburbs of Bombay to the city centre: amidst the bustling commuter traffic, hundreds of lunch deliverers carry their heavy loads to their customers, office workers in the swarming business centre. In the VPRO documentary 'Dabba Wallahs', the deliverers, customers and cooks of this ancient tradition are introduced.
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by Marjolijn Poulssen

What a difference in diet can lead to: a peanut butter sandwich can easily be wrapped in cellophane, but a portion of dahl or spicy curry , supplemented with sweet potatoes and chapatis cannot. Some 100 years ago, a canny Indian saw the point in having the boxes delivered to customers. He invented the dabba wallah system, a courier service with roundsmen, clothed in immaculate white, collecting the lunch boxes ( dabbas ) from the cooks in the suburbs and delivering them to the hungry customers in the city centre.
Complicated system
As soon as the deliverymen have put the collected metal boxes in the appropriate yron racks, they walk to the overcrowded trains with an average load of 80 to lOO kilos on their heads. People who are regularly riding their folding bikes in the morning rush hour in a Dutch city more or less know what this means. Cursing, pushing and shoving, every morning the same stressful ritual. Once in Bombay, the dabbas are exchanged according to a seemingly ingenious and complicated system and distributed by the group leaders among the deliverymen who each have their own route. Every dabba is provided with a distinctive colour and letter, which can be
'recognised' by the illiterate deliverers. If everything goes according to schedule, the actual delivery round can start towards noon: the dabba wallah heaves his load on his head and with a resolute swing sets out on foot, as the use of an otherwise convenient means of transportation like a bicycle or a handcart is out of the question in the dense throngs.
Devil's dirt for the stomach
The consumers of the dabbas each have their individual reason to make use of the system. For one, it is simply a solution to a practical problem, specifically the personal transport of a stack of boxes with liquid contents in a packed train, for the other it is a reassuring thought that his meal is not prepared by a member of a lower caste. And where pork is taboo to a Muslim, it is important for the interviewed Tamil that the right herbs and spices are added to his food. His wife, who has been preparing her husband's dabbas for over twenty years, explains why: 'I use cloves against coughs and colds, turmeric has a medicinal effect, and devil's dirt is good for the stomach'.
Courier of true love
The dabba wallah system is grafted onto the tradition in which a married wife cooks the food for her family and therefore has to prepare her husband's dabba at the crack of dawn, whether she likes it or not. An exception to this rule is the Hindu woman who tells how she and her husband, a Muslim, defied all the social rules and married out of love. After a suicide attempt by her would-be husband, both families eventually consented to the marriage. With a radiant face, she tells that every morning she affectionately prepares her husband's dabba. Once in a while, she puts a small flower or poem in one of the boxes, thereby telling him that he is not forgotten when he is working. Sometimes, her love is requited with a little something by return of mail.
A better future
It is one of the few rays of hope in a documentary about people whose lives have often been determined by fate. Like Shankar . He left his native village at a young age, some 200 kilometres from Bombay, in the hope of building a better future in the big city. He found a job as a dabba wallah. Today, Shankar ('I'm at least 50 years old') is still a deliverer of dabbas. At one time. he Ihad his own group of wallahs, the dream of every roundsman. But Shankar had many brothers and sisters, and every time one of them got married he had to sell part of his business to pay for the wedding. Now, in the dawn of his life, he is back where he started: he does no longer have his own company and again has to sleep with 25 other men in a tiny room. But he cannot complain: some men have a rougher deal and are forced to sleep in a 'reserved' berth in the street.
Savings system
The dabba wallahs are organised in a cooperation complete with a board, a chairman and even a savings system. A nice idea, but none of the deliverers can save anything: the few savings they can put aside each month by living very frugally go directly to their families in the province, if it has not disappeared in the pockets of their corrupt bosses by then. In a chaotic meeting, one of the owners does not beat around the bush: 'We treat newcomers like cattle. Together with the other elders we try to keep them down'. The remark is all the more distressing if we realise that many a dabba wallah is older than the man in question.
McDonald's
The dabba wallah is a dying profession. A growing number of customers eat their lunch in the canteen or at McDonald's. One or two people bring their own lunch, after all, as due to the heavy traffic the roundsmen more and more often fail to deliver their loads in time. According to one of the men, it is only a matter of time for the Indian railways to decide to bar the dabba wallahs from the crammed trains. The government is also interfering, planning to prohibit dabba wallahs to carry more than 35 kilos. If this law is passed, it will be the definitive end to a typically Indian tradition.
Dabba Wallah 's Lunchdeliverers in Bombay
NL 1998 - colour - 60 min.

Direction: Chris Relleke, Jascha de Wilde
Production: Nellie Kamer for VPRO
Fax: # 31356712381
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