Tiffin
Encyclopedia
Tiffin is lunch, or any light meal. It originated in British India, and is today found primarily in Indian English
Indian English
Indian English is an umbrella term used to describe dialects of the English language spoken primarily in the Republic of India.As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947 English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts...

. The word originated when Indian custom superseded the British practice of an afternoon tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

, leading to a new word for the afternoon meal. It is derived from the obsolete English slang tiffing, for "taking a little drink or sip". When used for "lunch", it is not necessarily a light meal.

In South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

 and in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, the term is generally used for between-meals snacks: dosa
Dosa
Dosa or Dhosai is a fermented crepe or pancake made from rice batter and black lentils. It is indigenous to and is a staple dish in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, as well as being popular in Sri Lanka...

s, idlis, etc. In other parts of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, such as Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, the word mostly refers to a packed lunch
Packed lunch
thumb|A typical American bagged lunchthumb|[[Bento]] packed lunchA packed lunch is a lunch prepared at home and carried to be eaten somewhere else, such as school, a workplace, or at an outing...

 of some sort, in particular to light lunches prepared for working Indian men by their wives after they have left for work, or for schoolchildren by their parents. In Mumbai, it is often forwarded to them by dabbawala
Dabbawala
A dabbawala ; also spelled as dabbawalla or dabbawallah; literally meaning , is a person in India, most commonly found in the city of Mumbai, who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting the freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office...

s, sometimes known as tiffin wallahs, who use a complex system to get thousands of tiffin-boxes
Tiffin carrier
Tiffin carriers or dabbas are a kind of lunch box used widely in India for tiffin meals. They were also used in Singapore and Malaysia during the 1950s-60s, and were known as tingkat. Normally they come in two to three tiers. Tiffin carriers are opened by unlocking a small catch on either side of...

 to their destinations.

Tiffin often consists of rice, dal
Dal
Dal is a preparation of pulses which have been stripped of their outer hulls and split. It also refers to the thick stew prepared from these, an important part of Indian, Nepali, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi cuisine...

, curry
Curry
Curry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of dishes from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines...

, vegetables, chapati
Chapati
Chapati or Chapatti or Chapathi is an unleavened flatbread from the Indian subcontinent. Versions of it are found in Turkmenistan and in East African countries Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania...

s or "spicy meats".

In addition, the lunch box
Lunch box
The lunch box, also referred to as a lunch pail or lunch kit, is used to store food to be taken to work or school. The concept of a food container has existed for a long time, but it wasn't until people began using tobacco tins to haul meals in the early 20th century, followed by the use of...

es are themselves called tiffin carriers, tiffin-boxes or sometimes tiffins.

External links

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