Office Lunch Banter

No self-respecting Indian man denies himself the occasional, if not regular, indulgence of a home cooked packed office lunch. Is there really any greater pleasure than waiting fifteen minutes before lunch time at the office, knowing that you have packed yourself a stupendous meal? It’s true, there is a child in all of us, still waiting for that recess bell, waiting to dig in to the parsi boy’s dhansak or that gujju’s dhokla or that Iyer girl’s thaiir sadam and maavdu. Actually nobody wants that paavum Iyer girl’s thaiir sadam. It’s like opening presents on Christmas morning, only every day. Everybody has an office lunch story, replete with characters ranging from the eccentric to the blissfully normal, carrying home-cooked meals ranging from one single course to 7-layered tiffin boxes of uncovered treasure, the sharers and the stealers, the starers and the stalkers, the early eaters and the late-snackers, the clean punters and the messy slammers, the married and the un-married, the envious and the charitable, the vegetarians and the non-vegetarians. Oh! How fucking wonderful office lunch times are!

There are of course others, the naysayers, the wet blankets, the gastro-hipsters who believe that home food is a carb-rich monstrosity not to be meddled with. Not ever. They therefore, deny their peers of what would have been an otherwise acceptable variety on the office lunch table. Yes, I’m talking about you, daily-subway-going-eating-soup-and-salad fellow. I don’t think I like you. Just pack some lunch, boss, for everybody else at least. There are also those who disturb the natural order of things by landing up at the lunch table without lunch. These are dangerous creatures, I assure you, most likely to stare down your meal while jolling from the side of their face until you ask them if they would like a bite. It is then that they will proceed to eat all your food and add no value to your lunch experience. These type of people must be avoided at all cost by not informing them when you are all heading for lunch. God, I hate those guys!

While I’m sure there are many in Bangalore who do carry lunch from home on a daily basis, there are no tiny love notes in dabbas delivered by men in cute hats romanticised in the IT city. Having spent more than a couple of years in Mumbai eating lunch delivered daily by a dabbawalla, sometimes cooked by myself, I can safely say that we Bangaloreans haven’t really embraced office lunch culture yet. While there are pockets of white-collar gastronomes with whom I have had the pleasure of belting a few lunches who deserve a mention, on most occasions lunch is a quick affair, sometimes relegated to mundane conversations around politics, bad-roads, traffic or cricket. Food doesn’t take centre-stage ever. This is sad really. I mean, the next time you have lunch in the office, just do a quick recce of the food on the table. It’s probably a better variety that you would find anywhere in any restaurant. Bangalore, take control. Take control of your lunches.

There are dangers to carrying a fully stocked lunch bag though. I remember a story told to me by a Mr. Mehta who carried a famously large duffle bag of lunch and snacks from Borivili into Opera House on the local train. After a particularly boring day at work, Mr. Mehta boarded the 7:12 PM Borivili Fast and was happy to have settled into a seat sometime after Dadar, placing his lunch bag in the overhead luggage rack, as most people do. On alighting at Borivili and walking a few 10-12 minutes in the direction of his chosen destination, Mr. Mehta realised he had left his favourite lunch duffle back in the train. He returned and to his surprise the train was still at the station and had not departed for its return trip to Churchgate. As he walked closer to the first class bogie that had delivered him there, he realised something was amiss. A crowd had gathered around the bogie and there was palpable anxiety with mutterings of “bomb”. Apparently, someone had left a suspicious looking bag in the train and the bomb squad had been called in by an alert Mumbai citizen. After lifting his jaw off the ground, Mr. Mehta realised he had better let this bag go and disappeared from the scene before the cops showed up. We never saw the bag in the office again. 

An office lunch worth dying for? Probably not.