ReDharavi

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Food-Making
Chivda, boondi, sev, gathiyas…all
tasty, savoury snacks made from rice
flakes or chickpea flour are part of
Dharavi’s food-making industry which
is largely home-based. The sweet
chikki, made of peanuts and jaggery,
is a very popular item, not to forget
the salty khari biscuits, the delicious
butter biscuits, and fresh slicedbread
and buns made in Dharavi’s 25
bakeries.
The making of papads (cracker or flat
bread) relies on the usage of open
spaces like courtyards or terraces
for drying of the wet papads. But
in crowded Dharavi, ingenious
housewives manage to make the
biggest use of the smallest of spaces.
The Punjabi Ghasitaram Halwai
Karachiwala factory in Dharavi is the
largest sweets factory in Mumbai and
maybe in India. It is said to use 2,000
litres of buffalo milk and 800 litres of
cow milk everyday. Very interestingly,
workers from different regions
produce the sweets of their region
– so the Bengalis make chamchams
and rosgollahs, the Punjabis make
ladoos and gulab jamuns, the
Maharashtrians make kaju katri and
barfis and the bhaiyyas (migrants from
Uttar Pradesh)make samosas.
Not so far away, at the crossroads,
are the shops selling savouries and
sweets manufactured in the homes
just behind the shops. Ramaswamy
is one of the 27 chikki-makers
from Tamilnadu, whose leader is a
Muslim and who is considered the
father of their tribe. Ramaswamy’s
wife speaks only Tamil, but their
daughter is studying to be a chartered
accountant. Thanks to the sweet
profits from chikki!
The world’s most complex lunch
distribution network operates
in Mumbai: it’s an elaborate
choreographing of the collection
and delivery of more than 200,000
tin lunch boxes to office and other
workers all across the city, and their
return to source. So efficient is the
system that according to a recent
survey, there is only one mistake in
every 16,000,000 deliveries. Dharavi
runs a flourishing dabba kitchen too.
The concept of the lunchbox courier
(Dabbawala) originated in the 1880s
when India was under British rule.
Many Britishers opting for homecooked
rather than local food, used
this service to have lunch brought to
their worktables.
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