For every predicament Ila encounters in her kitchen, a solution is found in the upstairs neighbor’s basket which is carefully lowered to sit outside Ila’s window. Similar to the first “food films” as described by Steve Zimmerman, the food in The Lunchbox “emphasized centuries-old cultural culinary traditions” (34). Ila, a talented home cook, mother, and wife, seeks to reinvigorate her marriage through the lunch she cooks for her distant husband each day. Ila entrusts her amazing food to the hands of the dabbawalas, the famous and amazing system of lunchbox couriers of Mumbai, only for the delicious lunch to end up in the hands of a soon retiring widower, Mr. Fernandez. Meanwhile, Mr. Fernandez’s restaurant-ordered lunch ends up in the hands of Ila’s unsatisfied and unfaithful husband. Through the mistaken lunchbox deliveries, Ila and Mr. Fernandez exchange notes and begin to form a friendship. The Lunchbox presents different spheres of labor in food production including home and industrial kitchens as well as some individuals responsible for the visible portion of the food chain between kitchen and office. Beneath a charming story, The Lunchbox offers a depiction of food labor as an essential connector between nodes of society, a critique of large-scale production, and an example of the revolving door between structural power and individual meaning as defined in Mintz’s “Food and its Relationship to Power” (1996).
The Lunchbox focuses in on one part of the commodity chain: from small kitchen to business office. Although on a much smaller scale than Cook et al “Follow the Thing: Papaya,” The Lunchbox explores how today we are often “(un)knowingly connected to each other” (Cook et al 2004). Ila’s skilled cooking and the dabbawala’s impressive coordination both establish strong connections between people. The Lunchbox depicts both forms of labor as art; Ila as finessed and balanced and the dabbawalas as precise and organized. Ila’s delicious food is so intimate and intentional in its preparation that it provides a human connection for Mr. Fernandez who would otherwise remain lonely. The effects of Ila’s hard work extends so far that Mr. Fernandez is able to share the food with his new subordinate, Shaikh. The film depicts Mr. Fernandez’s relationship with Shaikh growing over each lunch, Ila’s food connecting two seemingly disparate characters.
The dabbawalas’ work is the physical connection from kitchen to office and back again but their system is more than a fine-tuned machine transporting lunches routinely. They are a network in and of themselves with their own culture of songs and traditions. Perhaps the most notable aspect of the dabbawalas community was their pride; “we never make mistakes” says one dabbawala when Ila confronts him for delivering her husband’s lunch to the wrong office. In a smaller community, the dabbawalas have created a modern-day manifestation of Wendell Berry’s old agricultural values. “There was still a prevalent pride in workmanship, and thrift was still a social ideal” (Berry 17). The Lunchbox challenges the disconnectedness of labor in this aspect of the lunch commodity chain and rather promotes recognition of the complexity within each node of a commodity network by representing dabbawalas’ complex system as well as their more social interactions.
The Lunchbox distinguishes quality of labor by examining the scale of production. Ila’s lunch first captures Mr. Fernandez’s attention because it is superior to the restaurant food produced on a much larger scale. In this way, the film invokes similar priorities to the local food movement. Eating home-made, individually packed food is imbued with the same “Jeffersonian romanticism” that characterized the early 1800s in the United States and later changed form slightly only to be adopted more recently by Mahatma Gandhi among others. This superiority of quality of food facilitated the relationship that soon became mutually nourishing for Mr. Fernandez and Ila.
The romanticism of a wife cooking for a husband is also the result of Mintz’s “outside meaning” or “outside power.” Ila cooks lunch, and likely most other meals, for her husband because “larger institutional subsystems usually set the terms against which these [inside] meanings in culture are silhouetted” (Mintz 21). While societal norms dictate that Ila should cook for her husband, those norms simply shape the “inside” meaning of lunch for both Ila and her husband. While her husband likely sees his cooked lunch as a right of marriage, Ila “[imparts] additional meaning to the material world” by using her food to win back her husband (Mintz 20). In this way, it is clear how national-scale societal norms shape the every-day individual practices of a household.
Additionally, The Lunchbox reflects the gendered nature of food labor. While Ila’s incredibly devoted work in her home kitchen is seen by her husband as a necessary part of her life and a right of his life, Mr. Fernandez pays male cooks to make his lunch every day because he has lost his wife. In this way, the male cooks in the restaurant are a part of an industry that participates in the free market that has been “[constructed] apart from any social context (household, community, etc.) to which [it] might be naturally linked” (Lyson 22). In contrast, Ila’s work does not have an impact on anyone outside of her household and she is much more isolated, even though she is doing the same work as the male cooks and creating a superior product.
While Ila’s cooking is depicted as an art and the lower-class cooks’ food preparation is depicted as work, Shaikh’s chopping is depicted as both a chore and a hobby. The Lunchbox overtly challenges traditional gender roles in the kitchen through Shaikh’s relationship with his girlfriend. Shaikh has no lunchbox and resorts to trading a banana for a taste of Ila’s concoctions and chops vegetables on the crowded train to save time in the evenings. Shaikh and his girlfriend openly joke about their roles in the kitchen and have created an inside meaning that is contradictory but still within Mintz’s outside meaning and power structure.
The Lunchbox depicts both how labor in food preparation is an essential connector between people and also highlights labor as a manifestation of the connection between structural power and individual meaning. The film also promotes home cooked food over prepared food while questioning the societal structures that support each type of labor. However, perhaps most striking is the film’s awe for each type of labor from kitchen to office. The film imbues in its audience an appreciation for every visible effort of the lunches without even giving a taste.
References
Berry, W. 2002. “How We Grow Food Reflects Our Virtues and Our Vices” In: Pence, G. (Ed) The Ethics of Food: A Reader for the 21st Century. Rowman and Littlefield: 5-25.
Cook, I. et al. (2004) “Follow the Thing: Papaya” Antipode 36(4): 642-664.
Lyson, T. (2004) “Chapter 2: From Subsistence to Production” Civic Agriculture. Tufts University Press: Medford.
Mintz, S. (1996) “Food and its relationship to concepts of power” Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power and the Past. Beacon: Boston.
Zimmerman, S. (2009) “Food in Films: A Star is Born” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 9(2).
I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment.
C. Maeve Grady