|
|
|
|
Tiffin
|
| |
|
| |
Tiffin is lunch, or any light meal.
Tiffin entered the language at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, perhaps because the English fashion for eating dinner mid-afternoon was giving way under the influence of the Indian climate to a main meal taken later in the day, requiring a lighter midday meal and a name for it. Why the much older luncheon wasn’t used isn’t clear. Instead, the English in India borrowed tiffing (gerund of obsolete English tiff to eat between meals) (tiffing a quaffing, a drinking), an old English dialect or slang word for taking a little drink or sip.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Tiffin' Start a new discussion about 'Tiffin' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Tiffin is lunch, or any light meal.
Tiffin entered the language at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, perhaps because the English fashion for eating dinner mid-afternoon was giving way under the influence of the Indian climate to a main meal taken later in the day, requiring a lighter midday meal and a name for it. Why the much older luncheon wasn’t used isn’t clear. Instead, the English in India borrowed tiffing (gerund of obsolete English tiff to eat between meals) (tiffing a quaffing, a drinking), an old English dialect or slang word for taking a little drink or sip. The word is still widely used in India for any hot light meal or snack taken at any time during the day.
In Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the term tiffin-wallah is sometimes heard, though the more common term is dabbawallah. Lunches are cooked at home by workers’ wives and then transported, often by train, perhaps 20 or 30 miles to their husbands' workplaces, each three-tiered tiffin-carrier or dabba probably passing through several hands in a sophisticated and efficient cooperative process. Those who deliver the meals by bicycle on the final stage of their journeys are the tiffin-wallahs or dabbawallahs.
An early example of tiffin is from a guide book, Cordiner’s Ceylon, of 1808: “Many persons are in the habit of sitting down to a repast at one o’clock, which is called tiffen, and is in fact an early dinner”.
In South India, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and in Nepal, the term Tiffin is generally used to mean an in-between-meals snack. Most road-side restaurants in Tamil Nadu will have a board displaying 'Tiffin Ready'. It is customary to be offered a tiffin as a courtesy when you visit an Andhra or Tamil residence. The word is basically a part of Indian English and hence not very much in use outside the country.
Outside South India, like Mumbai, the word "Tiffin" is mostly used for light lunches prepared for working Indian men by their wives after they have left for work, and forwarded to them by dabbawalas, sometimes known as tiffin wallahs, who use a complex system to get thousands of tiffin-boxes to their destinations.
This system delivers thousands of meals a day and does not use any documents as many dabbawalas are illiterate. It has been claimed that the tiffin delivery system of Mumbai is so efficient that there is only one mistake for every million deliveries.
The lunches are packed in stainless steel or tin boxes with carry handles, also sometimes called tiffins or tiffin-boxes. A common approach is to put rice in one box, dal in another and yet other items in the third or fourth. The other items could be breads, such as naan, vegetable curry and finally a sweet.
Another modern usage of the word also applies to lunches that may be packed by parents for children attending school, to provide a lunch during the school day if the student eats lunch at school.
In some former British colonies, the stacked porcelain or metal round trays with handles are called tiffin carriers (similar to the dabba transported by a dabbawala), and small-scale caterers use them for delivering meals to individual homes.
See also
- Bento
- Lunchbox
- Tiffin Service
External links
|
| |
|
|
