Billowing red cape, check. Straight, confident posture, check. Poised to take off from the roof of a building, check. The man on the book cover sure does have the makings of a superhero. Only, his superpowers are a bit different: he can bring hot, home-cooked food to your office, and has been doing this with punctuality and precision across a city since 1890.
A lot has been written about the dabbawalas of Mumbai. Now, Mumbai-based artist Abhijeet Kini has created a comic book on them. Released in Mumbai last week, the comic book, titled Dabbawala, was conceived by Anaida Parvaneh, singer and chef partner at the Mumbai outlet of SodaBottleOpenerWala, an Irani café and bar chain. “I’ve been a fan of the dabbawalas ever since their ‘Share my Dabba’ initiative a decade ago,” says Anaida. The men encouraged those who had extra food in their tiffin box to mark them with a ‘share’ sticker, so it could be offered to street children.
“It was a perfect example for how one can give back to society,” she feels, adding how she’s always been impressed by the dabbawalas’ strict code of conduct, their planning, and the fact that every dabbawala in the team is a stakeholder and not an employee. “I wanted to do something to honour them, and hence came up with the idea of a collectible comic book, all the proceeds of which will go towards them,” explains Anaida. The men also have access to the open files of the comic book, so that they can print it as a collectable comic in the future too. The comic book, available in Marathi and English, starts off with a little boy asking for his father’s help for a project on superheroes. “His father suggests that he pick Mumbai’s dabbawalas instead of Superman and Spider-Man.”
Illustrator-animator Abhijeet, who has been working for magazines such as Tinkle, says that he’s done the comics in his usual “humorous, children-friendly style”. His dabbawala superheroes are no different from their real selves — the men sport their trademark white kurta-pyjama, Gandhi cap, and chappals. According to Abhijeet, what makes them superheroes is how “they make it possible for an entire city to have good home-cooked food in office”. Step out around lunch time and you can see them at bus stops, train stations, on the road pedalling away on their cycles with their precious cargo. “They are part of the fabric of the everyday hustle and bustle of Mumbai,” adds Abhijeet.
Speaking after an afternoon of cycling around the city, 24-year-old Ritesh Andre, the spokesperson for Dabbawalas, says he’s excited about them being represented as superheroes. “Even the most well-networked online delivery service takes over a day or two to deliver what the customer wants,” he says. “But we are able to do two transactions — we drop the tiffin box, and also pick it up once they’ve eaten the food — the same day, that too on our cycles,” adds Ritesh. “That, I feel, is our superpower.”
Comic book Dabbawala is priced at ₹100 and is presently available at SodaBottleOpenerWala outlets in Mumbai. It will soon be available online.