Mumbai : The derailment that hit the suburban local train service, the metropolis’ lifeline, not only caused massive inconvenience to passengers on Tuesday but also threw the famed Dabbawalas’ operations out of gear.
Widely lauded for their slick system for reaching meals to thousands of office-goers, the dabbawalas on Wednesday failed to deliver tiffin boxes as they could not collect these back from offices due to the stoppage of the suburban local train services on Western Railway’s network.
Seven coaches of a Churchgate-bound fast local train came off the tracks on the WR line yesterday, leading to the blocking up of three lines between Andheri and Vile Parle.
The disruption caused a great deal of inconvenience to commuters as services came to a grinding halt for hours.
Dabbawalas, or Mumbai’s iconic lunchbox carriers, could on Wednesday reach only 40 per cent of their tiffin deliveries to Mumbaikars as they could not collect them back from offices in the evening on Tuesday due to the disruption.
“We could not get the tiffins back yesterday evening after rail services were hit for the entire day. Hence, we are unable to make almost 60 per cent of the deliveries today,” said Dabbawala Association president Raghunath Mendge.
There are nearly 5,000 dabbawalas in groups of 100 who deliver over two lakh lunch boxes from Churchgate to Virar, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to Kalyan and from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai.
Mendge said, “Today we were able to deliver only 40 per cent tiffins in schools and colleges where our men go on bicycles or other means outside of local trains.”
He added that the dabbawalas will resume their full services on Saturday as tomorrow is a holiday on account of Ganesh Chaturthi.
