Life, Lilies and Surf

Chapter 11

Such a lunch cannot be eaten in a hurry.  Many people working in the shops, offices and factories would go home and eat such a meal of at least two courses of rice with sambar or rasam and with curd along with one or two vegetable as side dishes.  After such a meal, some rest is essential.  A pleasant snooze for half and hour or so replenished  the energy to go back to work with vigour.  Even schools and colleges would start at 10 am and gave one hour lunch break at 1 pm to enable pupils to have a good meal.  Office goers who do not or cannot go home due to the home being far away, would get their meal brought to them at their workplace by meal carriers. Tiffin carries with four or five separate vessels stacked over one another, containing rice and the dishes,  and secured by clasp and with a roll of plantain leaf tucked would be collected from the home, carried in a basket mostly by women  and delivered to the people waiting for the food in their workplace. There were no hot carriers and the tiffin carriers were made of stainless steel or brass coated with zinc inside to keep the food unspoilt.  

The plantain leaf was provided so that the rice and dishes were ladled out with the clasping spoon of the tiffin carrier, on to the leaf and eaten and hand is not directly put into the receptacle. Whatever remains as uneaten was  left fresh and untouched by hand. So the woman who had to take back the tiffin carriers would take out the remaining  food and dishes, collect them all and clean the carriers with water.  The collected food would not be wasted.  It would be given to poor people like rikshaw walas  or coolies.  No food was wasted in those days and wasting food was considered a sin that would make a person wasting food plunge into misery and poverty. Think  what is happening now a days in the buffets of restaurants, especially of star categories.  In the buffet lunches and dinners, there would be hundred or more dishes from cuisines of different parts of the world. Many people would be piling on their plates large portions of all items and leave most of it as uneaten to be carried away by bearers.  Some of the restaurants even declare the number of kilos of such discarded food wasted every day.  

The systematic full meal tiffin carrier culture remains in practice even today only in Bombay. Should I say Mumbai ? Possibly because in Bombay the people live in far away places and have to leave their houses quite early in the morning to catch the suburban trains, allowing no time for the wife to prepare a full meal.  There would be time only to eat a scrappy breakfast.  The 'dubba carrier system' has got established and stays even today doing exemplary service to people. The not so educated dubba carrier and the system he works out are so perfect that it is a wonder even for foreign management experts.  

Latha and Bhaskar would eat a regular three course meal in the morning at nine o'clock and go to the office at ten and that was possible because the office was only three bus stops away from Latha's quarters.  In the noon time lunch break, they would order some snacks to their room from the office canteen.  Mostly the venue was Latha's office room as it had attached toilet and wash basin.  Such office rooms with attached toilets  were usually given only to lady officers. Latha was quite happy to have lunch with Bhaskar and discuss things with him and chat with him.  Sometimes Bhakar would ask Latha to invite her friends to her room so that they can eat together and gossip.  Geetha was the one who always loved to come and join them and it was very welcome for Bhaskar.  When she arrived with her meal basket of food and water, he would welcome her as a long lost friend.  Latha could easily perceive this extra attention but she kept quite.  She was also in the advanced stage of pregnancy and was not very energetic to move around  freely and talk very much.  She had started eating properly after initial months of revulsion to food, as it is so with all pregnant women.  She was quite justifiably expecting greater attention and care from Bhaskar and not any diversion of his attention towards anyone else. She felt that one should know these things without being told. She one day even said jokingly to Geetha, "Geetha,  When you marry and become pregnant, I am sure your husband would be more solicitous than Bhaskar.  And Bhaskar would also be there to advise.  So you should marry soon. Is it not so Bhaskar?"