ABU DHABI // Mumbai is the great example of the marvel of the tiffin box delivery service, and a number of documentaries have been produced exploring the phenomenon.
Known as "dabbawalas", the delivery men are part of an efficient system where the tiffin boxes are collected from homes in the morning and delivered to office workers across the city for lunch, using bicycles and trains.
In December, a short video clip India: Tiffin Boxes by documentary.com featured India's unique take on boxed lunches.
"For most Indians, there's nothing better than home-cooked food," the report said. "So every morning at about 9am, 5,000 men set out to collect over 175,000 packed lunches from homes and kitchens all across the suburbs."
Using tiffin boxes, an entire three-course home-cooked meal can be prepared to an individual's requirements and then transported across town.
Once picked up, the meals are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted.
"The tiffin service is run with military precision," the report said. "The whole tiffin network is run without any bosses and yet, every day, all 175,000 lunches are successfully delivered throughout the city in the space of two hours."
The BBC published a photo gallery "Tiffin time in Mumbai" on its website in February last year.
Satyaki Ghosh documented the organised trade of Mumbai's 5,000 dabbawalas, who have been a unique feature of the city for more than a century.
Each tiffin box weighs about 1.5 kilogrammes and changes hands during the journey four to five times.
The dabbawalas mainly belong to the Warkari sect, from rural Maharashtra, in Western India.
As many of them are semi-literate, they use a code of colours and numbers to indicate the station the tins should be sent to and their final destination.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
The marvel of delivering 175,000 meals across a vast city in two hours
Each day in Mumbai an army of 'dabbawalas' ensure workers across the city get home-made lunches delivered to them, by train and bicycle.
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