Say you work in an office in Mumbai. What do you do for lunch? Chances are you get a delivery. But not a delivery from a takeaway restaurant.
A delivery from home.
Every morning in the suburbs of India’s biggest city, thousands of men – known as dabbawalas – go from door to door, collecting lunchboxes prepared by wives and mothers. The boxes – known as dabbas – are made of metal, to keep their freshly cooked contents hot, and laid out in compartments, to keep the rice, bread and curry separate.
Between them, the dabbawalas collect no fewer than 130,000 dabbas, and then transport them, first by bike and then by train, to their intended recipients. They pride themselves on never, ever delivering the wrong lunch to the wrong man.
What makes this boast remarkable is that most dabbawalas can’t read. Instead of a label stating the recipient’s name and address, they rely on a system of coloured...