Lunch dabbas are a portkey

On recreating food from your school friends' dabbas as an adult

“Tu kya layi?” “tere dabbe main kya hai?” (what did you bring? What is in your lunch tiffin).

These words spread like murmurs through the classroom as we all try to escape the mundanity of our dabbas. As steel clinks and plastic bases thwack against the desktops, aromas waft through the room, the smell of roti and sabzi, pulao, the illicit excitement of finding chicken in your dabba, the congealed mass of maggi which only tastes good cold if it has been lying in your bag for 3-4 hours.

There are types of dabba bringers, of course. Those who brought food that is efficient to pack and finish, parantha rolls (like yours truly), the ones who were sent hot tiffins which would reach just before the bell tolled for lunch, the ones who would have napkins and spoons packed carefully with their lunches, and they would set their tables like the queen herself were coming to dine. The ones whose dabba leaked and spilt its oily liquid contents all over their lunch bags, the ones who brought the coke that fizzed in the school bus, making the contents of their bag sticky and sweet.

School lunch breaks are the first time many of us escape the rigour of our families’ food habits. The first time I ate prawn, the time I knew what Bengali food tasted like, that guava could be made into a savoury-sweet sabzi eaten with roti. Lunch break was the melting pot of cultures our constitution intended our country to be. (I was lucky to go to a school that didn’t stipulate a restrictive vegetarian diet for all students, and extended the policing from the uniforms into the contents of our tiffin boxes.)

Of these many lunches bartered, stolen and inhaled, some are ingrained in my memory.

A pencil drawing of a steel stackable dabba with text on the right corner: Tiffin #1: the dabba that went “thapp, thapp”. On the right corner is the logo of the brand paper boat. The image belongs to Paper Boat.

Aishu’s Dal Chawal

This dabba was hot property, literally and figuratively. She lived in the parallel street from school, and she and her sister’s caretaker Ajji (a wizened woman in a nawari saree) would come and drop off her dabba, often during the lunch break itself. The contents of the dabba were modest, but imagine steaming rice, and dal just from the cooker with barely a phodni on it, hot ghee, which would still be melting into the rice, and papad. It is a meal the whole country has had often in their lives, but it is the timing of it that makes it a cherished memory. Her dabba would pass from hand to hand in the class, each of us getting barely 2 to 3 bites, holding the steel box with the edges of our fingers to not get a burn. I visited her home after that and once requested that her mom re-create the same meal for me. The best dal chawal ever. One of the few things Section B agreed on, apart from our mutual dislike for Sections A & C.

Pencil drawing of a steel dabba which is open, and empty. It has a section for sabzi inside, the top of the dabba is next to it with a slot for a spoon. The text reads, Tiffin #2: the dabba with a missing spoon. There is a black paper boat logo on the bottom right of the image. This image belongs to Paper Boat

Abheesha’s Cheese Parantha

Abheesha joined the school in 7th standard a quiet and calming presence. I think we were made to sit in front of each other at the back of the class, as girls who hit puberty early and tower over their classmates for a short few years do. She once had cheese paratha, something I had never encountered (this was before amul cheese was a ubiquitous street food item). “Does your mom stuff the parantha with cheese?”, I questioned. “No”, she said as she handed me a cold folded-into-a-triangle-parantha, “just try it”.

Before I describe the amalgamation of the holy trinity of ingredients that form the crux of this dish, I must admit my distaste for ketchup. It makes everything taste of it and contributes nothing flavour-wise. This parantha was handed to me cold and was just a regular parantha folded over a slice of cheese with some ketchup. The cheese melts as the parantha cooks, forming a seal for the pocket that encloses the salt of the dairy and the sweetness of Kissan Ketchup. Eaten cold, it was the textural difference between the layers of dough, and it was a delight when you were expecting the steady reassurance of salted atta. As is my nature, I once demanded to be in the kitchen when Aunty made it, so I could see what she was adding to it. It was just the three ingredients. The hot melted cheese burnt my tongue but seared itself into my memory.

Mamta’s Garlicky Aloo Bhindi

If there is one person whose dabba I have inspected in school it was Mamta’s. I just wanted to know if my favourite food in the world was there. We got into school at 9 am, lunch was at 1 am, and our dabbas languished in the space under our desks or our lunch bags for hours. Food tends to have the best aroma when hot, but this dish surpassed expectations. The moment the edge of the Tupperware came off, I would be like a hound standing at her desk, “Aloo bhindi na?” I would demand. The scent of the garlic masala hit you first, then you saw potato cut in circles enrobed in their yellow oily garlic masala. It was a masala that made even bhindi taste excellent when cold.

the photo is of a steel plate with Sindhi-style garlicky aloo bhindi. There are two rotis folded over on the plate, ghee glistens on the top roti.

This was gourmet for starved teens, it was one of my first active experiences of olfactory senses triggering a flood of salvia. The roti sabzi set of Tupperware, with the circular dabba for sabzi, allows it to hold a punishingly small amount, half of which Mamta graciously handed me with one whole roti. I got back in touch with Mamta 2 years ago, to ask for this recipe, and it remained just that memory. Last week, when faced with too much bhindi and a lack of inspiration, I pulled out our chat. Then realised I had forgotten to save the image she had sent me. Google told me that this is a common Sindhi dish, and the ingredients looked like they would produce the same results. The moment the ground masala hit the pan, it smelt of lunch break, of the smell of garlic that was barely contained by the airlock of mass-manufactured plastic. You can have your version of garlic bliss by referring to a similar recipe here.

I don’t recall school too fondly because it is often a reminder of the high levels of masking I did as an undiagnosed autistic, it also reminds me of the casual sexism that formed the basis of our conditioning rebellion. But lunchtime has always been special for me, I love food, and this community experience will always be special. What dabba memories do you have?