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A date with the dabbawallahs

At a time when technology rules, a few old-timers keep alive the tradition of serving home-made lunch to businessmen and school children, writes ANIMA BALAKRISHNAN

Getting a few minutes with Mahaboob Jaani or Annachi can be a test to your resilience.

So, you wait at street corners and school entrances, and if you are a moment late, well, you have missed them.

As I glance at my watch for the umpteenth time, a little past mid-afternoon comes a man on bicycle. He seems to be out of a yellowing frame of a 1960's Bollywood flick with his giant "cooling glasses."

He is Mahaboob Jaani. His riding looks a trifle laboured as he balances about 50 lunch bags on his cycle.

Annachi, on the other hand, can be seen hovering over school kids as they fish out their lunch bag from the pile. The "meesakaran" waits for them to put it all back after their meal, collects them with practised precision and sets off.

Mahaboob and Annachi are part of a dwindling tradition in Coimbatore — the dabbawallahs.

They may not be a patch on the professionals of Mumbai, who caught the attention of Prince Charles and even the Forbes magazine.

Casseroles and shift schedule in schools and colleges have taken a toll on their business. But a few faithfuls, who still prefer homemade food for lunch, help keep a tradition alive.

"Our number has shrunk from 300 a couple of decades ago to 25 now," says P. Gopal, lunchman.

But despite the change in the job prospects, a few like Gopal and Annachi have stuck to the task of supplying lunch to school children.

For Mahaboob, the routine has been the same for the past 15 years. He supplies lunch to a host of businessmen across the city who swear by home-made food.

Time management is the key in their scheme of things. Mahaboob, who caters to the residents of Bohra Colony in Peelamedu, starts at 10.30 in the morning. The collection of lunch bags from around 60 houses goes on till 12.30 and then begins the ride. His timing is worked out to precision. By 2.30 p.m., lunch would be delivered to the last of the hungry souls near Kanakadhara theatre.

And then it's half an hour's teatime at a nearby stall — probably the only break he gets the whole day. Then the ride begins again, this time to collect the lunch bags.

It is a similar story when it comes to the dabbawallahs to schools. Lunch boxes are collected from places as far flung as Thudiyalur.

The skill that goes into collecting the boxes is interesting. Though a dabbawallah caters to three to four schools, never does a lunch bag get to the wrong child.

"I have been doing this job for the past 40 years," says Annachi. "Though I may not know the name of the children, their face is clear in my mind," he elaborates.

Nurturing bonds

The favourite one-liner doing the rounds among the dabbawallahs is that, "Parents only give birth to the children, we feed and raise them."

Not a point of view without grounds as there are dabbawallahs doing the job for the third generation of the same family.

"The children for whom we brought food are now scattered all over the world," they say, beaming with pride. The dabbawallahs get paid between Rs. 100 and 150 a month. "By the time we drop back the tiffin boxes it is around five in the evening; so managing another part-time job is not possible," says Gopal.

Be it a cyclewallah like Mahaboob or those who have graduated to mopeds and cell phones, dabbawallahs bring in the charm of an old world. At a time when lunch sprouts out of plastic cans, to see a dabbawallah spotting his kid from a group of screeching ones and then leading him by the hand to give him lunch and watching over as he has it, is heart-warming.

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