Every morning for twenty-two years, I’ve collected lunchboxes from homes across the suburbs and delivered each one to the right desk in the right office by 12:30, using a coding system passed down from dabbawalas before me and no computer of any kind. Trains, cycles, handcarts, and a lot of walking — that’s the whole operation.
People find it hard to believe, but in over two decades I have never once delivered a box to the wrong person. Not because I’m extraordinary, but because the system doesn’t forgive carelessness, and I decided early on that carelessness wasn’t something I could afford, not with two sons depending on this income.
Both of them are engineers now, working in offices not unlike the ones I deliver lunchboxes to every day. I still start before six every morning. My knees complain more than they used to, but the boxes still arrive on time, every time, exactly the way they have for twenty-two years.
Leave Your Footprint
"I lived this." "I relate." "My father was exactly like this." Say what this stirred in you.
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