The Tiffin (3 page)

“No!” said Kunal. It burst out of him a bit louder than he intended. A few heads turned in his direction.

“Oi, stupid, there are other people waiting to be served!” yelled Sethji. “Stop chit-chatting and get on with your work.”

“That's for me,” said Kunal. “And I think you should know: I don't plan on staying here too long. I hate it here.”

Vinayak smiled again, a nice warm smile this time. “You'd better go now. We'll talk some more tomorrow. Don't make any hasty decisions.”

Kunal nodded and dashed back to the counter. He grabbed another order of tea and fried eggs and picked his way over to table number six.

“Your mother must have been one good-looking woman. Look what she produced,” someone hissed behind him. “Kasam se, I'd love to meet her!”

Kunal's hand shook violently and hot tea scalded his skin. The plate of eggs crashed to the floor, yolks oozing yellow over shards of white china.

Kunal whipped around to face a hulk of a man who sat at table five, calmly eating a paratha. He slammed the glass of tea on the table and glared at the man. “How dare you speak about my mother like that.Take it back.”

“Jhootha!” said the hulk, not meeting Kunal's eye. “I didn't say anything. Now get lost and clear this mess before you go.” It was obvious he had not expected Kunal to answer back.

Kunal stared at him, a helpless rage bubbling up inside. Recklessness, too. “Obviously, you mustn't have had a mother or you wouldn't be talking this way.
You
were probably found in the gutter,” he said, loud enough for the entire dhaba to hear.

There was pin-drop silence. He had everyone's undivided attention.

“You worthless insect,” said the hulk. “You stand there and insult me? Me? The one who puts food in your mouth?”

“What is going on, boy?” said Sethji, waddling up to them. He whacked Kunal on the back of his head. “Breaking my expensive plates again, I see.”

“This gorilla insulted me and my mother and made me drop the plate. Honest!” said Kunal.

“Seth, if you make it a habit of employing liars in your dhaba, I'll stop eating here and tell all my friends, too,” said the hulk. “You're going to lose a lot of business.”

Sethji paled.“Calm down,” he said.Then he turned to Kunal, his eyes murderous. “Don't blame your butterfingers on our paying customers. You're a liar — it runs in your blood. Apologize before I give you a thrashing you'll never forget!”

Kunal quailed at the expression on Sethji's face.The dhaba was Sethji's life and money was his God. Any harm to either and Sethji would be more dangerous than a rabid dog. And yet Kunal could not get himself to apologize.

“Seth, this is ridiculous,” said Vinayak, who had appeared in their midst.“I know Kunal. He does not lie.This idiot must have started it.”

Kunal glanced at Vinayak gratefully. No matter what, the dabbawalla always stood up for him. If only Sethji could have treated him with a little bit of respect rather than a slave he would have said he was sorry. But not now — not when he was being humiliated for no fault of his own.

“Who the hell d'you think you are?” said the hulk. “Sethji, why is this old goat butting in?”

“I'll thank you to keep your long nose out of this,” snapped Sethji, glaring at Vinayak. “Go back to your table.”

“If you don't handle this fairly,” said Vinayak in a cold voice, “I'll have to talk to the Dabbawalla Association about finding another supplier for our customers' tiffins.”

Sethji's eyes darted from the hulk to Vinayak. Sweat beaded his forehead. For a moment, no one spoke.

“Why is everyone standing around when there is work to be done?” said Mrs. Seth as she walked up to them briskly. “I'll handle this.”

Vinayak nodded and ambled back to his table. Sethji, visibly relieved, walked away to his perch behind the cash register. Mrs. Seth turned to face the hulk and stared up at him without flinching.

“No one mistreats our boys but us,” she said. “Don't think I can't tell the Truckers' Union a thing or two about you. I wonder how long you'll remain employed after that.”

The hulk mumbled a curse and sat down as raucous laughter rippled through the packed dining room.

“Shut up!” he said. He thumped a fist on the table and glared at everyone.There was immediate silence.

“As for you,” Mrs. Seth said, turning to Kunal, “get back to work.You've caused enough trouble for one day.”

Kunal started to walk away when Mrs. Seth hauled him back roughly.
Now what?
He thought.

“Stupid boy!” she hissed. “Watch out for the glass.”

Kunal realized he had been about to step on the shards with bare feet. “Thank you!”

“Don't thank me,” she snapped. “You think I'm going to pay for a doctor if you cut your foot? Clean this mess up immediately.” She marched back to the kitchen.

Kunal picked up the broken china and stood up. The hulk stuck his foot out and Kunal had no choice but to stop. His pulse raced as he looked into the trucker's cold, black eyes. “Make me a laughing stock, will you?” he whispered. “I'll get you, smart boy. Out there, when you least expect it. We'll see who has the last laugh.”

Kunal managed to walk back to the kitchen on shaky legs. He stayed there, feeling Badri's eyes bore holes into his back, until the hulk left.

chapter three

KUNAL WAITED IMPATIENTLY AS BADRI filled up all the tiffins with his concoctions, which varied on a daily basis. Today it was goat curry in the bottom box, masala eggplant with a dab of mango pickle in the middle one, and a dollop of rice with two chapatis in the topmost box. The kitchen helper cleaned the spills on the outside of the tiffins, slid them into their aluminum carriers, and snapped the clasps shut. Soon the tiffins were ready to make their journey to the station, and onward to the city centre.

As Vinayak had explained to Kunal, they would change many hands before reaching their owners, sharp at noon. Two hundred thousand boxes would be delivered in this precise way, each and every day of the week. In three hours the dabbawallas would cover an area of almost forty miles, then make the reverse journey to bring the boxes back.

Kunal brought the heavy tiffins to the entrance two at a time. Vinayak was waiting by the door, his Gandhi cap covering a black mop of hair shot through with silver. The plastic cape thrown over his shoulders was really just a large garbage bag slit along one side. It was still pouring and the pavement was slick and shiny. A slow-moving river of umbrellas bobbed past.Water gushed noisily into the gutter.The honking of traffic was steadily growing louder.Vinayak arranged the tiffins within the carrier.

“Can I help you sort them?” asked Kunal. “Will you show me how?” He had asked this question often in the past but Vinayak had always been in a hurry to get to the station as soon as the tiffins were filled. He looked at the old man hopefully.

Vinayak glanced at his watch, then back at Kunal, an unfathomable expression in his eyes. “All right.” He picked up one rain-shiny box and moved closer to Kunal.

“This number-letter combination at the bottom is the most important part; it's the destination station, building, and floor. So ‘9 AI 12' means this tiffin is to be delivered to the twelfth floor of the Air India Building at Nariman Point, which is area code nine. The number three in the centre means this has to go to Churchgate. Clear so far?”

Kunal nodded. “And the letters VLP and E?”

“I see you've been practising your reading,” said Vinayak.“Very good! That is the originating address of the tiffin,” continued Vinayak. “We have to make sure the tiffin gets back too, right? So VLP is Vile Parle and the E stands for Hanuman Road within that area. Lesson over for today. I had better get going.”

“You didn't tell me about the red circle,” said Kunal.

Vinayak laughed. “Looks like you're planning to deliver a tiffin right now. It's for easy identification at Churchgate when the teams have to pick up their boxes for deliveries.They're all colour-coded. Simple, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said Kunal. “I think I could learn this quite easily.”

Vinayak ruffled his hair with a wet hand. “An intelligent boy like you? Of course you could, Kunal, but now I must run or I'll miss the train. They're our lifeline. And if we're late, our customers have to wait, or go hungry. No dabbawalla can afford to let that happen.”

“Thank you for speaking up for me,” said Kunal. “I have no one else who will.”

Vinayak stared at him for a long moment from under the plastic cape.Water dripped from the tip of his nose but he barely noticed it.The rain came down harder, beating on the aluminum tiffins that lay between them, splashing onto his bare toes. Kunal wished he could climb into the carrier and be whisked away by Vinayak, never to return.

“This happens often, does it not?” said Vinayak.

Kunal thought of all the instances when Sethji had humiliated him, yelled at him in front of a roomful of customers. He'd never once treated Kunal with kindness. He blinked furiously to keep from crying.

“If things ever get too bad here, you come to me. Okay?”

“You really mean that?” asked Kunal. He searched Vinayak's face. Was he serious? In all the years he had known Vinayak, this was the first time he had made such an offer.

“Yes,” said the dabbawalla.

“But how will I know where to find you?”

“I live in the chawl at 51, Janpath Lane. I'm on the third floor, room number five.”

Kunal frowned, trying to memorize the address. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Sethji glaring at him and tapping his watch.

“I have to go,” said Kunal.

“Here, I'll write it down for you,” said Vinayak. He ducked into the dhaba and quickly scribbled the address on a page of his small notebook, tore it out and gave it to Kunal. “It's not too far from here. If you ran, you'd get to me within ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” said Kunal. He tucked the note into his pocket and watched Vinayak hoist the carrier on to his head with an expertise that spoke of years of practice.With a little nod, Vinayak loped away, the black garbage bag flapping behind him.

THE REST OF THE DAY went by in a blur of heat, food, and flies. A tide of people surged and ebbed through Bombay Bahar. Kunal ate a meal of watery dal, rice, and mutton bones with the other waiters standing in the kitchen during a brief lull. The food seemed to sink straight to his feet and leak away, leaving him no more than a shell of skin and bone. There wasn't enough food for a second helping, or enough time, either. And he was definitely not accepting any food from Badri, no matter how starved he was.

The next wave of hungry customers descended and Kunal was at their table, polishing the Formica with a greasy rag and taking their order.

At five in the evening, he got a break for a couple of hours. A new shift of boys poured in. The first batch was off. Some went home or to other jobs. For Kunal there was no escape. He had to report back downstairs at seven o'clock. He hobbled up to his room, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep almost instantly. But not before he extracted the green glass bangle that had once belonged to his mother, run his fingers over its smooth surface for the millionth time, and tucked it away safely under the mattress, out of reach of Sethji's grubby hands.

A FAIR WOMAN WITH GREEN eyes stood in front of him. An angel ... surely his mother. She was so beautiful that Kunal could barely look at her. His heart ached with pride and joy. She opened her arms wide and called out to him ...“KUNAL!”

The word exploded in his dreams and jarred him awake. He sat up, heart pounding, and glanced out the window. Darkness had softened the shabby appearance of the houses opposite. Here and there the soft glow of a lamp shone through. In other windows the harsh, unforgiving glare of a tube light spilled out. Rain still pattered on his windowsill, mixed with the sounds of the traffic and the buzz of chatter from the dhaba below. He got out of bed and switched on the light. On the walls around him were damp patches in grotesque shapes. Sometimes he would lie there and stare at the watermarks; he'd see a dog with its teeth bared, or a pair of splayed hands reaching out to strangle him, or a spider, waiting to pounce.Today the walls just wept.

“Don't make me come up!”

They're really missing me
, thought Kunal as he splashed his face in the tiny bathroom just outside his room. He ran a damp hand through his hair, brushed his teeth with his finger, and was ready to face the world.

He walked downstairs and his eyes went straight to the clock. Seven-thirty. He was in trouble.

“Why can't you be on time?” Mrs. Seth said as soon as she saw him. “Don't you know better by now?”

“Sorry,” mumbled Kunal.

“Go serve table ten, and for God's sake, stay out of trouble,” she said. Their eyes met and he glimpsed something there ... but it was gone in an instant. Mrs. Seth hurried into the kitchen, wiping her sweaty face with her dupatta.

Kunal went straight to the pickup counter covered with plates of food, each crowned with a halo of flies. Under each plate was a chit with a table number. He found the number ten, barely visible because of the orange oil saturating the paper, and hurried with the steaming plate of sambar and rice to a scruffy customer scratching his long hair, flecked with dandruff.

“If this food is as tasty as you look ...,” the man said, leering at Kunal.

Kunal ignored him, plunked the food on the table and sidled along the periphery of the room back to the counter. It was a roundabout route, but a lot safer in the evening when some of the more rowdy customers came in. Most of them would have imbibed the cheap alcohol from the bootleg liquor bars that abounded in the area and would be bolder, touching or pinching him at every opportunity.

“Kunal,” Sethji called out. “Over here!”

Kunal walked up to him, flinching a bit, and hating himself for it.

“Delivery. New customer at Pandit Road. Here's the address,” said Sethji. “Be quick.”

Kunal's heart raced. Freedom for a short while. And he knew exactly which route he was going to take on the way home, after the delivery. He lowered his eyes, afraid the excitement would show.

“Where's Lalan?” asked Kunal casually.

“Out on a delivery too,” snapped Sethji. “Get going ... or do you need a kick-start?”

Kunal grabbed the bag of food and walked out the door. One of these days he prayed he'd have the chance to kick-start Sethji to oblivion.