By Mikaela Mari

The dabbawala’s favorite part of the day was going to Mrs. Pawar’s house. Every Thursday, when he picked up the lunch she had packed for him to deliver to her husband, time stood still, and the world halted in its orbit. The dabbawala dismounted from his bicycle and went up the same three flights of stairs leading up to her residence, each flight made of fifteen steps. Every fifth step or so held a potted plant, an occasional pair of slippers, a disregarded ball. As he reached the top of the third stairway and turned the corner to her flat, the same sun greeted him, sunlight pouring down his whole body from a full pitcher. The smell of her kitchen welcomed him at the door—bright scents of cardamom and ginger and peppercorn. In the dabbawala’s world of routine, the gravity that held it together was the trips to Mrs. Pawar’s.

The dabbawala saw her through the window, always standing in the same spot in the kitchen. She smiled and beckoned him inside. Out of all the people he served, she was one of the few that allowed him inside her home.  

“Good morning, Mr. Kumar, how are you today?”

They exchanged greetings and talked for a few minutes, about the weather and the sales the dabbawala had seen at the market. In the brief moments while Mrs. Pawar finished last-minute preparations for her husband’s lunch, the two were mostly quiet and simply enjoyed each other’s company. The dabbawala watched Mrs. Pawar stir her meals in pots so huge she could feed her whole apartment building—which she often did. In exchange for cash or other ingredients, she would cook meals for other families, and because it was in her nature, Mrs. Pawar also made sure the dabbawala always had something for the road.

“Is there anything you would like me to pick up at the market for you this week?”

“There’s no need, thank you,” Mrs. Pawar replied. Sometimes the young boy next door helped with her groceries. “Please take care, my husband says the streets are no good these days.”

The dabbawala smiled before he closed the door. “I will try my best.”

And he carried these things with him every Thursday morning.

~~~

The ride from Chembur Heights, where Mr. and Mrs. Pawar lived, to Dharavi was no less than five kilometers. It took the dabbawala about half an hour to reach the station where Mr. Pawar worked as the head constable for the civil police force, one of the many police stations patrolling the largest slum in India. Mr. Pawar’s line of work allowed him to stay in the nearby police academy a few nights a week. Despite his having free meals at the academy, Mrs. Pawar made sure to give her husband the taste of home as often as she could, and she relied on the services of the dabbawala, for she walked with a cane and a limp. Most days, she stayed in their flat, four stories up, where time and the world were always, reliably, still. The usual protocol was to leave the lunch tins with the security guard at the station gate, but Mr. Pawar opted to wait for his lunch across the street, at the community center where he sat with his little boy during his daily break.

“Mr. Kumar, what are we having today?” Mr. Pawar had always been friendly with the dabbawala. The father and son were sitting at the community center’s steps. The little boy clung to his father’s arm as he watched him open one of the tin boxes.

“Baba, there’s prawn in there! Wah! A lunch for a king!”

The boy was no more than six years old, with big eyes the color of grey pearls. He rubbed the itch on his nose with the back of his hand, jumped up and down. He tugged at his father’s sleeve with urgency.

“Baba, Amma says that only kings and queens eat prawns. They’re expensive, yeah? Aunty really gave you prawns for lunch?”

“It seems that she did.”

“And you will share them with me?”

Mr. Pawar laughed. “How could you say that? Silly boy, doesn’t Baba always share with you?”

The child only shrugged. The dabbawala readied his bicycle.

“Roshan,” Mr. Pawar cleared his throat. “We will share this meal because you are a good boy. Show Mr. Kumar what we’ve been learning. What is two plus one?”

The boy counted his fingers silently and answered, “three!”

“Very good. What is three plus three then, Roshan?”

Roshan once again gave the right answer. At this, the father smiled, bringing Roshan’s small head close to him while ruffling his hair.  

“Well done, Roshan” the dabbawala said. “Continue to be a good student and you will go very far in life.”

Roshan nodded earnestly. He sought the dabbawala’s approval too. To Roshan, Mr. Kumar looked ancient, otherworldly, much like a king—no matter if he and his father were close in age.

The dabbawala bid the father and son goodbye, though not leaving before he watched Roshan take his first bite of prawn, his pearl eyes beaming.

~~~

The dabbawala did not know about Roshan or Mr. Pawar’s second marriage until the boy grew old enough to walk and speak and become his own person and Mr. Pawar was unable to hide him anymore.

Lately, the dabbawala always found the boy with his father, never finding one without the other, whether it be outside of the police station or at the community center across the road where Roshan played with the other unsupervised children. The dabbawala had never seen Roshan’s mother but assumed she must always be working to provide for her family, the same way Mr. Pawar worked to provide for both of his.

~~~

The dabbawala saw and knew many families. Though he did not have one himself (his wife died shortly after marriage due to a motorcycle incident), he believed he understood the ins and outs of familial affairs. He had become very observant throughout the years and could recognize love by the smallest of things. He knew what a lighter lunchbox meant in comparison to a heavier one, knew the difference between houses wrapped in spice and heat and those wrapped in silence. From his line of work, he mastered the art of noticing how people showed their greed, patience, empathy, and anger by the flick of their wrist or the curve of their lip.

In the beginning he could not believe in the capacity of humans to be unfaithful. He would pick up meals from wives in the middle of entertaining lovers and deliver them to their over-worked husbands. At times, at the secret request of the receiving party, the dabbawala dropped off lunches at gambling parlors and gentlemen’s clubs instead of the address written on the carrier. Throughout the years the dabbawala became less surprised—more understanding, even—at how humans made their own paltry attempts to find joy in the day to day. At rare times, the dabbawala even found himself envying the men he served—those with lunchboxes to own and wives to come home to. Not a day went by when he did not yearn for his late wife Fatima’s cooking.

During the dabbawala’s following delivery to Mr. Pawar, he was curious to see Roshan waiting by himself at the station gates. The boy spotted him right away.

“Mr. Kumar! Baba is not out yet.”

“Hello, Roshan. Yes, perhaps it’s a busy day today.”

“Baba says it is always busy. Fighting crime never stops, you know.”

“It does not. What are you up to?”

“I was playing basketball with my friends, but now the girls have convinced them to play hide and seek. Hide and seek is boring to me, every day everybody hides in all the same spots!” 

The dabbawala nodded in agreement. He debated whether to leave Mr. Pawar’s lunch with his son.

“I wait for him every day, like a good boy, you know. I’m the best at it. I’m not old enough for school yet but Baba says soon he’ll take me to school and pick me up and I’ll see him more every day! Amma is so busy too, she said she cannot pick me up from school. Amma will be even busier when the new baby arrives.” Roshan looked up at the dabbawala with wide eyes. “I am also going to be busy too, you know. I am going to be a big brother! No more basketball or playing hide and seek. Soon I will be teaching my new baby brother or sister these things.” .

“You will be a very good big brother, Roshan.”

Another pause, and the little boy opened his mouth to speak again.

“Mr. Kumar,” he said, his head cast toward the ground, drawing lines in the sandy dirt. “What is Aunty like? You know Aunty, right? You get the food from her all the time.”

“She is a very nice person.”

Grey eyes looked up at the dabbawala, murky, like rainwater.

“I know Aunty is a good cook. Better than my mom!” Roshan said, then clamped his small hand over his mouth. “But I would never ever say that to my Amma. That would hurt her feelings.”

The dabbawala stooped down in front of the boy. “It will be our little secret.”

At this, Roshan smiled.

The dabbawala kept Roshan company by asking him arithmetic questions, and shortly afterward Mr. Pawar exited the gates of the police station. Roshan jumped up and sprang to his father.

“Mr. Kumar! Did I make you wait? Did you boys talk about anything?” Mr. Pawar asked, looking at the dabbawala but then resting his eyes on the boy, who was now hiding his face behind his father’s leg.

“I was challenging him with more arithmetic,” the dabbawala said as he extended his packaged lunch toward him. “He is a very smart boy.”

The dabbawala winked at Roshan but he failed to notice, only eager for his father to open the tin containers and see what surprises lay hidden inside.

~~~

To get to the Pawar residence, the dabbawala must pass by Chembur station and its market, where everything happened at once. The dabbawala found comfort in the chaos—he enjoyed weaving through the various animals and seeing throngs of people fall into single file lines through the market’s crevices, like blood cells passing through capillary beds. Chembur Market, like all markets, reminded him of his wife.

The dabbawala saw Fatima in the women carrying bags of rice on their shoulders, the ladies who wore bright bangles up to their elbows that tinkled as they walked. He felt her presence in the children’s laughter and the smell of cardamom and milk. The dabbawala had always believed people can have only one lover in a lifetime, but he may have been one of the lucky few—some are unfortunate enough to have two.

Past Chembur Market and Union Park the dabbawala must get off the main road and bike through a few minutes of peaceful residential neighborhood until he reached the apartment complex on the hill of Lal Dongar Road, where Mrs. Pawar and time and the spinning of the world would be waiting.

A thought that always crept into the back of the dabbawala’s mind: Fatima may no longer be in this world, but Mrs. Pawar was still making meals for her husband. When the dabbawala first met Mrs. Pawar, it was hard to ignore the commonalities like pieces of red thread linking her and his Fatima.

Another thought the dabbawala had in his mind, constant and stuck, like a stubborn pebble in a shoe: in another life, a parallel universe where the dabbawala did not love Fatima, he believed that he would love Mrs. Pawar instead.

As he parked his bicycle against the wall, he allowed this thought to come over him as he started his ritual of climbing the stairs. He reached the first step and let the world be still again as he made his way up. Fifteen steps each, a pair of slippers here and there, a freshly watered plant. He turned the corner, the same sun welcomed him, the sunlight pouring out of a pitcher. The smell of her kitchen welcomed him at the door. The cardamom, ginger, peppercorn. He saw Mr. Pawar’s shoes on the mat.

Mr. Pawar was there, sprawled across the couch, reading the newspaper.

“Mr. Kumar, how are you doing? My wife didn’t tell me you were coming.” He looked over to Mrs. Pawar, who, despite no longer needing to cook a packaged lunch, was still standing in the kitchen, preparing something. “Did you forget to tell Mr. Kumar I won’t be needing meals delivered to the station anymore?”

“Ah, I may have forgotten.” Mrs. Pawar concentrated on ladling food out of hot oil.

“It’s very good news actually, Mr. Kumar.” Mr. Pawar cleared his throat. “I have been relocated. The head chief in Chembur Station has retired, and they needed somebody to fill the spot. I put my name in for consideration and got the job. Now I can come back home every night, and even have lunch at home most days. It is like a promotion, don’t you think?”

Mr. Pawar had risen from the couch now, his arms crossed against his chest, giving the dabbawala a smile, an easy one, well-lived. It settled into the wrinkles of his eyes.

“Congratulations, Mr. Pawar. That is quite convenient for you.”

Mr. Pawar nodded and turned his attention back to his newspaper.

“I must tend to the other meals, then,” the dabbawala said as he exited their apartment.

The dabbawala was halfway down the first set of stairs when Mrs. Pawar called out from behind him, a cane in one hand and a tin lunch box in the other.

“Please give this to them,” Mrs. Pawar said, thrusting her arm toward him, and the dabbawala reached out for the container, still hot.

He took it in his arms and nodded. The dabbawala made his way down the stairs. He carefully placed the container on his bicycle. He looked up to the fourth floor where Mrs. Pawar was still standing, composed, steady. The dabbawala headed toward Dharavi and the world kept spinning, and that was how it is.

~~~~~

Mikaela Mari is a writer based in Norwalk, CT, and fourth year medical student at the University of Vermont.