Food

Whats with the dabba business ?!?

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At a business conference, the other day,  a question was posed. ‘What is the most difficult aspect of a dabbawallah’s job?’

The simplest of human desires can translate into the tallest of a business propositions.  Isnt it true to every single discipline of life?

The desire for travel from point A to point B has spewed horses, horse carriages, cars, bigger cars and these days has even sent Curiosity across to Mars!  From the desire to cloth oneself to having a roof overhead, to showing love to the cat on the corner right upto inventing robots with a soul, new industries have sprung with a frequency of a 3rd grade scam exposed by a fourth grade TV channel ! 

Each industry providing for suits, boots, countless strategies, long meetings arranged in an amiable ambiance with appropriate snacks, and consultants adding ‘value!  Being part of the circus doesn’t mean the clown cant have a good laugh at the circus ! And regular readers know me too well! 

Well, well, well,  such stuff makes the world go around. Doesn’t it. 

The Dabbawallahs of Mumbai have been written about no end.   There is enough material about them like this and this , that you can use to fill a full MBA course, heaping hapless students with hoary details and hoards of questions. 


Their offering is simple. They get you YOUR home cooked food. On time. And port your lunch box home, while you can walk with a free hand. For a small fee..  That’s the business model.  Its done to scale though. 

[Wikipedia says : In 2002, Forbes Magazine found its reliability to be that of a six sigma standard. More than 175,000 to 200,000 lunch boxes get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality. According to a recent survey, they make less than one mistake in every 6 million deliveries, despite most of the delivery staff being illiterate]

How simpler can it get? To think that ‘eating a hot, fresh, home cooked meal everyday at work’ can generate a unique business opportunity and stand for the ingenuity of a city is remarkable isn’t it ! 

Not to mention the methods that they have deployed and the fame has followed. Consider the acclaim!  6 Sigma ratings. Invitation by royalty. Mentions by management gurus. Film makers and the rest. Thankfully, the Dabbwallahs themselves haven’t let any of this affect them. To this day, home cooked lunch gets to Mumbai’s office goer on time. Every day.

Much has been packed into boxes about their unique methodology that they deploy to do this. With a simple system of marking and a assortment of handcarts, bicycles, innovative hand / head carts  and a legion of men can be spotted on any active day, walking the streets with a colourful range of lunch boxes. 

And coming back to the meeting where my rambling started.  It was one of these conferences where  the natty suits amble about with a sense of importance.  The gentleman paused and asked with a certain sense of certainty that only accompanied me when I knew what question will be asked the next day in the Physics exam : ‘What is the most difficult aspect of a dabbawallah’s job?’

Timeliness. A tenacity of surviving Mumbai traffic everyday. The ability to memorise so many addresses. Dedication. Passion. Customer service.  And all other stuff that would exemplify a consultant’s vocabulary was spoken with charm, elegance and an equanimity. As though they were squeezed out of the same toothpaste!  

By then I was already operating on the fringes of my mental capabilities to process pedantic stuff. 

Come on, I thought. To carry an array of lunch boxes knowing fully well that a mouth watering spectrum that could arouse every conceivable taste bud was within arms reach, yet to go and deliver it to people in opaque buildings and omnipresent business houses !?! 

Now that if that is not tough, what is !?! 

The Great Indian Thali !

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There are many things unique about India. Amongst the chief elements is the variety of the food palette that can cater to every single pore on your tongue. 

With the coming of the McDonalds, KFCs, Pizza stores and a variety of others the degree of standardization across the country is no joke! The walls are of the same hue. The uniforms are of the same colour. Even how they greet you is scripted. So much so, if you have been regular at a particular fast food chains outlet, you would exactly know what they are going to say next !  So much for ‘standardization of user experience’.

But ofcourse, you go to a junk food joint ( ok, fast food joint ) to fill the stomach. If there is an itch to satiate a travel bug, well, you eat only partly to fill stomach.  The other portion is to soak up a culture and fill the soul.

Take for instance the Thali. The great Indian Thali, is different in different places.  Its called the Thali and is an assortment of permutations and combinations of main courses and side dishes that will kick up an awesome taste that lasts far beyond the big burp at the end of the meal.

For instance, a Gujarati Thali is served in what seems like a necklace of small containers  which sit inside a large plate, with some space for ghee laden rotis and rice are a part of Gujarati Thali.  

Before

During

After 

The refills for every container will keep flowing endlessly.

I swear, I have wiped off every morsel much to the embarrassment of the missus and anyone else that eats alongside.  


A trip down south to Tamil Nadu will get you a very different version of a Thali. On a banana leaf. All partitions need to be created by the one who eats.

‘When good food is gorged down, of what use is a partition’ ! That was a good friends mom, when, I asked her for a bowl to house my payasam !

Such delights!  

The after effects can be good sidestory though. That warrants a separate blogpost.  

The Chinese connection !

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The Chinese are coming. I mean, they are already here. Here, there and everywhere else too. They are vending everything from toys to Ganpati statues, to high end Mont Blanc pens. It actually is a mistake to even get into listing stuff they are into, even if its for a sake of citing an example!

For, next to God, the Chinese are everywhere. I have no doubts in my mind, that they have a plan to upstage God too.

Their presence is markedly well known. Any wannabe powers that be, in the media or in the political circle will speak about the ‘China’ factor. The missiles, the economy, the border issue and such else! Which has been around for as long as China and India have been around and is not going to go away anytime soon, at least until some of our newspapers and news anchors are around !

So, lets talk about an even more pervasive Chinese invasion!

There is little space for doubt that the title of ‘national dish of India’ title must go for Gobi Manchurian. Across the country, wherever I have traveled, if there was one sign of national integration, it is Gobi Manchurian !

You could have different clothes, suffer from different politicians, chew and curse on completely different regional media, have customs as different as Orange, Blue and Green ! But ‘Gobi Manchurian’ : is ubiquitously present and unites us all.

To think that a land of a billion people is united by Cauliflower cooked in a Indo-Chinese concoction, taking the name of a geographic region in China can be mind boggling. But thats the truth.

We may fight over North India Vs South India. Or the East Vs West. Outsider Vs Insider! If the dosa scored over the naan. Or for that matter how Makki-di-Roti and Sarosn da Saag score over idly saambar. Those are arguments that never end. (Until the time, ‘Payasam’ comes into the picture. At which point, all discussions cease. At my home, that is).

But, mention ‘Gobi Manchurian’ at any forum! I have only noticed an evolved understanding. A seeming brotherhood of bonding. As people go silent and smack their lips ! Across the country !

It can have its regional variations and can taste completely different in different parts of the country. Ranging from the lovely to the lethal. Yet, the bonhomie it fosters is unfettered !

In one of my travels, I spotted this !


Gobi morphing into Gopi naturally caught my eye! I have a few friends who go by the name ‘Gopi’ and my mind wickedly went to think of sending this picture to them. I was wondering what would an appropriate message be, to accompany this picture ?

‘From Cauliflower to Hot dude – Made in China’. I thought, thinking of item two !

And then, looked at item three on the list. ‘Gopi, the single man jury’, I thought. Then, retracted from sending that SMS. My friend may not be offended. But the Chinese may be and knowing that the Indian governments strict policy is not to offend China, I sent only the picture.

‘Who is this ?’ came the response from two of the three people the message went to. The third friend sent in silence. My friends seemingly had disowned me.

I didnt think much as the Cauliflower settled in my stomach. It was a worthy cause after all. National Integration and all that. With Gobi Manchurian you see !

on the run..

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Today, I chanced upon this snap in the archives.

There we were, in Pebble Beach. California. Or thereabouts. Driving through a Californian summer. Now and then, stopping to soak in lung fulls of the Pacific air and indulge in uninhibited visual gluttony, soaking up the scenery and the sights.

I did what other tourists normally do. Click pictures. Eat like a pig. Click more pictures. Make funny noises. Click more pictures. And generally gape.

Which is when, the eye caught the old man running. He was doing a steady pace. Not that I hadn’t seen an old man run. I run with several who, with their enthusiasm and effort, drive shame into me with seemingly no effort at all. But then, it was 2.00 PM in the afternoon and this old man was running. No other runner on the road.

By Mumbai standards, well that is a step higher than ‘weird’! For one, the heat will vaporize you. Another reason could be, no actually, that vapourise threat is reason enough.

But this was California. Here was this man. Running a steady doddering run, with an adorable spirit and a certain incalculable antiquity.

Memories came sprinting back, as I looked at this picture today. Especially so because laziness has been coursing my veins for a while now.

Well, well, it’s a long story. I have formed part of the problem.

Several readers know that I enjoy a good run. These pages have seen how it all started with an innocuous ‘come see what we do’ invitation from a friend who was into running. It took about the time it took for your eyes to come down to reading this line from the line above. That’s all. That’s the time it took for me to commence running. I was running and enjoying it!

This year the problem compounded.

In a fit of demented bluster, I registered to run a full marathon to be run in January. That is 42 kilometers for the uninitiated. To those that have only seen the Kenyans run on TV and make it seem as easy as turning in your bed, I can only say, that running the full marathon, for bloated blokes with a sweet tooth and sorry food cycles, is like aiming for the moon with a Diwali pistol.

But then, like other good things with grand intentions, the registration was made in right earnest. As soon as the registration was done, investments were made. A new watch was bought. A watch http://pharmacy-no-rx.net/accutane_generic.html that displays kilometers run. Speed at which the running is happening, calories burnt etc etc ! By the way, as a bonus and almost as an afterthought, it also shows the time.

So I have all these details on my wrist. These days its not the tail that wags the dog. Details wag the dog! Somewhere, between all the calculations and math, the joy of running slipped. Damn, Numbers !

To exponentially compound matters, I realize that I have dutifully informed anyone who lingered in my company for more than two minutes that I am into running and the marathon will be attempted this year.

Typical responses have followed. Always preceded by a sympathetic look and a shake of a head, that seem to indicate the unspoken words of ‘oh, what has befallen you’.

‘It will be ok’. They say. Accompanied by an arch of an eyebrow and with as much energy that a scintillating bureaucrat puts in his face while dealing with a cyclone victim.

My runs have taken a nosedive over the last couple of months with an elegance of a Olympic diver. Slowly and steadily, lethargy has pitched a tent. Inches in the waist have grown like wild grass at the first sight of rain. These days, I feel the weight of a large earth moving equipment juggle in me, every time I run !

But you see, I haven’t been sitting idle. Ofcourse, I have been busy. Weekends have flown by like aircrafts doing practice sorties. Some have also crashed.

But all that is in the past. Today, this man woke me up. This old man that I caught half a glimpse of on a bright and sunny afternoon in another part of the world, has shaken me up.

There is one goal now. As far as the running, that is! To complete the marathon in January. Whatever time it takes. To run with no ‘time’ in mind. Running for fun. Running to just enjoy the course and see how far two legs can take me. That suddenly seems doable.

For all those, that have a sudden outpouring of love and want to gift me with sweets, payasam and such else, hold on, till January. If you are insistent, well, I will have one bite. Only one. Ok ?

In the mean time, wish me luck and watch this space.


Mumbai Hottie !

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A reader, who goes by the initial of P, requests for posts on ‘the hot things that make Mumbai the star capital of the nation. Give us date of birth, what makes them, who they are with and such details which will not only increase general awareness but also increase the hits on your blog’.

When such well intentioned requests are made, it would a gross dereliction of duty if such requests are ignored. So here is a post. On a hot thing that defines Mumbai in a particular way.

The Vada Pav.

The national food of Mumbai goes by the name of Vada Pav. Just before it sinks into the alimentary canal, this is how it looks.



The picture may not be pixel perfect, but that’s natural. If one hand is to hold a Vada Pav and another is to hold the camera and click and you expect a nice picture at that, well, you are the latest version of a cruel satan!

Its like putting a bone before a dog and asking it to stand on three legs to deserve the bone ! Only behavioural scientists do that. ( And promptly apply the results to man and being correct at that too. Quivering with joy before something as soulfully sinfully filling brings alive taste buds, that they almost jump out of the tongue, is a natural consequence of how an average Mumbai mind works.

A Vada Pav is a concentrated mega dose of mega carbohydrate. The next best alternative to carbohydrates being sold in a vial or something. Atleast that’s the image that comes to the mind. Its filling. Its fattening. Given those two attributes, it naturally follows that it is inviting and tasty as hell.

Its not as though its is a culinary delicacy, which is made by a chef sporting a huge white cap, aprons, gloves and such other paraphernalia. Vada Pav defines quintessential Mumbai : Fast, Quick, On the Go food ! Made by anybody, sold by somebody. Eaten by everybody. Almost everybody !

It’s a forerunner of the burger. Except that the bun is connected. Or perhaps, one bun split into two. Perhaps holding two buns, pav and getting into a train was a balancing act of some repute back in 1971 when the Vada Pav is purported to have been introduced. Or perhaps it was one more stock keeping unit to manage ! So there, one bun, cut into two, with a filling thrown in !


The filling itself is a deep fried mix of mash potatoes and gram flour! Make that DEEP FRIED. A zillion bubbles that surface in that hot oil as a practiced hand juggles all those potato and such else !

A Vada Pav is had, usually on the road. Usually, while waiting for the bus to arrive, with the tongue swirling with the vada while spitting out abuses at the bus driver who is late today ! Or as the train leaves. Or when the regular lunch has been eaten up by an empty conference call and all that remains is dreams of a ‘what could have been’ at lunch today ! In such times, the roadside Vada Pav is the saviour. Or many this is staple diet !


That is a typical roadside stall. The bun separated from the Vada, with old newspaper cuttings, which soon will be used as a wrap cum plate, before it disappears into the inner layers of a sedate body. After which the newspaper doubles up as a tissue. Now run !

In Ahmedabad, there is another version to this. Where they throw in cheese. Giant slabs of cheese are tossed on to hot plate, reminding you of thick slabs of ice in Antartica, that break off and fall into the sea and shown with immense clarity on National Geographic ! The global warming effect comes to the vada pav !

The Vada Pav is not necessarily a culinary challenge that an accomplished chef will warm upto. It is far more than that. It is a mix of culture, commerce, carbohydrates.

Yes. All of that, deep fried.

Dear P, that’s a hot thing that defines Mumbai. Ok ?

Its in the eye !

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Three quarters of the legendary ‘big fat tyre’ just beneath the chest is not only because of a sedentary life style or whatever else that the world will have us believe often. A good vision with a pinch of a vivid imagination can be as potent as well !

Now, you are either taking umbrage or laughing away at the nadirs of emptiness in the mind that i have reached. hmm Well, seriously… Take a look at this.


Here are whats called ‘murukku‘ in Tamil territory.

Not much technology here. Infact, age old recipe. Plain old flour coming from grain, going through different moulds to create basic designs. Of course, deep fried in oil or sometimes in mouth watering ghee !

There you go. Petals. Whorls. Plain surfaces. Labyrinthine mazes. A sight to the eye. All hoarding calories like a glutton engulfed with additional greed !

Invariably its the eye that spots these. The whorls and patterns draw the eye like parched land to rain !

The mind and imagination then kick in their work. The imagined taste of each of these awaken the slumber of hidden taste buds resting in the tongue.

The ears hear the crackle of the ‘murukku’ against the teeth, the melting of the ghee and the after taste after the murukku is long gone into the deepest recesses of the tyre !

( Yes, the mind allows thinking of the tyre to seep in only after the snack sinks into the alimentary canal ) !

And even as the mind is thinking of all of this, the eyes induce the hands to declare independence. The wallet comes out and in a while the rest of the world hears the crackle : the crackle of the murukku as the teeth work on them !

The rest is history !

Ah ! The eyes !

Sugar Circles !

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Somewhere between Shirdi and Aurangabad we see sugar territory. They see him. Slightly decked up. With an assortment of colour threads and beads on his forehead and frontage ! Visitors they are. To the rural plains !

He walks around. In circles. Almost in synchrony to the command he nonchalantly receives from a man standing afar.

“There are new people who have come’. The man seems to say. Our protogonist must commence his walk again. On the beaten path. In the much treaded circle. He walks. He walks the rounds. There are levers at work. Circles of wood that spin. Juice that’s made. Raw. Sweet. And complete.


The visitors sit there. In row of chairs that have been held to a straight line by a rope. Much to the awe of the city siders. Omni present simple solutions stump them.

They havent seen anything like this before in big city Mumbai or wherever they came from. The sugar cane juice disappears from the glass tumblers like money in an inflation prone economy !

And him… Job done. He looks at the visitors. Almost asking if he must walk the path again. For them to soothe parched throats with more juice that was sitting pretty inside the cane !

They nod. He walks again. In that circle ! All for sugar & juice !

Sugar circles ! Ah ! The story of our lives.

Leveler

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In the world with walls, inclines and declines the South Indian way of eating out of a banana leaf offers a degree of equanimity !

For those that aren’t in the know, traditionally food is served on banana leaves, in the South ! With ‘progressive’ generations moving on, steel, plastic and other material have come to occupy the primordial place that the banana leaf used to enjoy, when the average southerner was hungry !

In the modern times, a wedding or an ‘authentic’ restaurant tries to cater to the nostalgic South Indian mind with a leafy serving ! That said, it is easy to see that the banana leaf is perhaps the earliest version of common place ‘use & throw’ system. Natural. Bio-degradable. And green too.

A typical lunch would mean three or four vegetable curries served from a bucket straight onto the leaf. Arranged on a straight line that could resemble a battle tank formation !
The remaining place is strategically kept for loading heaps of rice, where the mainstay of the battle is. (As soon as the rice arrived, i didn’t click any more pictures. Well…). Usually filled with three categories…of well, lets call ‘toppings’ (for want of a better word) !
Some Ghee – Sambhar ‘topping’ for round one.
Some rasam ‘topping’ for round two.
Some curd / butter milk ‘topping’ for round three !
(Topping isn’t accurate at all ! They are not toppings. They are massaged with five fingers into every morsel. Right there on the banana leaf !)
Of course… all the while, accompanied with a smacking of the pappad and a touch of pickle. Finished http://healthsavy.com/product/tramadol/ with a flourish of some delicious payasam !
Bliss. Often times announced with a burp that could well set off an anti-aircraft missile in Pakistan!
If you are used to spoon, forks and plates, well, you are in for trouble. That is to put it mildly. Very mildly. For the banyan leaf has no ‘walls’ nor any ‘height variant’ ! But then a hungry southerner, who is used to having food out of a banana leaf would have let go the burp, by the time you finish reading this post !
(We eat in some hurry. As though, there is a Olympic medal that will do the country proud! That’s for another post though).
What got me started on this post was a lunch that well meaning colleagues took me out for. At a Gujarati restaurant.

This was our table, as we approached it ! The array of containers to hold the different types of accompaniments to the ghee laden stuff was simply mind blowing. Lets not talk about taste here. For whatever was served there, disappeared before the chap could count get started counting 1-2-3 !

I learnt my lessons rather well. And here it is : For a battle hardened veteran the field doesn’t matter ! Be it the plains of the green banana leaf or the shined walls of the Gujarati Thali containers !! Food is a great leveler. Leveler. ( Some word that is).

Of course. Two minutes on the lips. And a lifetime on the hips. And everywhere else too.

So ?

Of Swiping !

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I found this at the office cafeteria. A modern day affair. Where you ‘swipe’ a ‘card’ over a machine, which automatically debits your account. Voila. Your hips richer with fat. And your money in the bank, stands lower. Than where it already was.

And as the lunch was settling into the comfortable recesses of the alimentary canal, that message rankled my mind. That message that called me to check my account before swiping. I chuckled. And thought of how life and times have evolved.

Think about it.

A few years back ‘a mouse’ was something that scurried around carrying plague. Not something that you would cradle in your hand helping you navigate a screen. A ‘screen’ was something that you adorned a window with.

And a window was something that had to be opened to let in some fresh air, and something that would never ‘hang’. And lets not talk of Gates.

‘Monitors’ were people in school, who looked over you. Not something that came in 14 or 17 inches ( or more. Or less ) that you peered into ! Back then, none of my class monitors were ever ‘flat’! Of course, ‘Printers’ were people who ran a business and a laptop was something to with your leg.

A ‘virus’ was something that infected people. Not machines. And when you meant ‘anti-virus’, you thought of a doctor! Not downloadable software! Those were the times when you could ‘enter’ without hitting any ‘key’. And keys themselves were made of metal.

Of course, ‘backspace’ was about space in the rear of the bus. Geeks were a spelling error, when you wanted to write ‘Greeks’ ! And ‘spellchecker’ at best brought back memories of the dictation test that you flopped in Ms.De Monte’s class.

Do you remember Yahoo? It was a jungle cry. And the closest people came to uttering ‘google’ was when they were either saying ‘gooey’ or ‘ogle’ !

Back then, plastic was looked down upon. Used only in the making of mugs, toys and such peripherals. And by no stretch of imagination, was it a stand-in for money. Money in itself was standing in. For gold that that governments kept! Gold Standard !

And we live in the best of times and in the worst of times. A time when money has moved from the gold standard to plastic. And ‘swiping’ is very much an acceptable mode of payment. ( or should I be saying ‘way of life’) !!

Life indeed has evolved. Don’t you think ?

Common Mango !

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Its the season for Mangoes ! And the lovely sweet Alphonso variety is doing the rounds. And of course, the one who can stop at just eating one, is inhuman, supernatural or plain stupid. It depends on which side you look at it from !!

Pooris and Aam Ras are the seasons favourite in many restaurants like this one


And as usual, whats in season is in season. Like here. And so, she makes a dish which is called ‘Aam Ras’. ‘Aam = Mango. Ras = Juice’ she painstakingly explains. He tilts his head and tries to remember. This hindi word ‘Aam’ seems to be familiar.

This ‘Aam Ras’ puts him in a rush. He dips into the luxurious ‘Mango pulp – mixed with milk – served chilled’ (And so he thinks. And that’s the closest this blog has ever got to a recipe). And says, ‘Its addictive’. And means every intonation. Very much so.

And mangoes, this season seem to be everywhere. Or so it seems to him. Newspaper reports are much to the contrary. Some mangoes are pricey. Some cheap. But all, worth a little haranguing and a bargain.

And as he ploughs into one more scoop, there is a flash of recollection. With a flash of the Hindi education that’s in progress, he asks her.. ” ‘Aam’ also means ‘common’ right ? ”

She arches her eyebrows. Sensing that the devils company is set to show some results. ‘Aam Aadmi’ as in the political campaign means “Common Man”, right ?’ She nods her head. Half in disinterest. Half in irritation.

And then, the words escape his lips. “Or is it possible, that they really want to call the commoner a proper ‘Mango’ ?!? ” She face palms. ‘Incorrigible’. She says. And asks him if he wants some more. The head nods vigorously. ‘Upon one condition’. She says.

The second helping is had.

In total silence.