NEW DELHI -- His bicycle laden with shiny steel dabbas (tiffin boxes), Neelu Sawant weaves his way through Mumbai's traffic maze to deliver lunch to offices around India's financial capital. Dressed in a crisp white kurta-pajama and a traditional Gandhi cap, the 45-year-old's day begins at dawn with the collection of freshly cooked food from a range of home kitchens -- his routine for 23 years, six days a week.
Sawant is part of an army of 5,000 dabbawalas (lunchbox deliverymen) who have been distributing lunchboxes to almost 200,000 city office workers since 1890, earning around $200 a month. Working like a human chain, the men assemble with the food they have collected at a designated railway station and then cycle or walk to surrounding offices for delivery. A complex system of alphanumeric codes helps the largely semiliterate or illiterate workforce to collect, sort and distribute the food boxes.
