Tiffin can be a snack, a packed lunchbox or a savoury or even sweet dish. Generally these are vegetarian, with less spice, and served in small portions.

“Tiffin was a concept introduced by the British, who brought their habit of high tea into India. This habit suited the Tamil Brahmin community in the south, who usually had no breakfast and instead had an early lunch followed by tiffin at tea time,” said food raconteur and television host Rakesh Raghunathan.

India’s hot debate: is curry a racist hangover from British colonialism?

Author Rukmini Srinivas, in her book Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food, described tiffin as “a play on the time of the day and the nature of food served in many homes in India – an informal snack or light meal served at breakfast or late afternoon tea, and it usually refers to a transition food”.

Sonal Ved’s Tiffin: 500 Authentic Recipes, which celebrates India’s regional cuisine, contains recipes from poha (rice flakes with potatoes) to Tamatar chaat (street food served in Varanasi made of tomatoes).

Tiffin now also refers to home-cooked meals packed for working Indian men by their wives, or for schoolchildren by their parents. Even the restaurants serving these snacks in India are called tiffin centres. One of Bangalore’s legendary restaurants, started in 1924, is named Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR) and is a popular place for tiffin from rava idlis to crisp dosas served with hot filter coffee.

Over time even the lunchboxes – usually tiered stainless steel compartments stacked on top of another and clamped down from the sides or the top – became known as tiffin boxes. They kept the flies off and the food warm, and transported everything from rice and lentils to curries and pickles that made up a complete meal.

Many believe the first tiffin boxes were invented to carry food from temples without spilling. They were probably also inspired by the food servers in train stations who carried stacked food boxes.

The first tiffin carriers were made of brass and the locking system was fastened with a big spoon. The insides were often plated in tin, to prevent the brass from corroding and tarnishing. Later the preference turned to aluminium, stainless steel or polystyrene boxes, which are lighter.

Tiffin boxes vary in size and shape, and modern versions come with insulated covers to keep the food piping hot. Gargantuan ones are used to transport food to weddings or film sets. The carriers are taken to school and work, on picnics and on long train journeys.

Kanchana Prasad, a software professional based in Bangalore, said, “Tiffin carriers are pure nostalgia – they represent my mother and grandmother’s delicious home-cooked food which was sent to school along with a mat to sit on and cutlery. Even after all these years I can remember the fresh, healthy food that sustained me through the school years.”

Tiffin boxes became the best way to carry home-cooked food in an era when hotels and restaurants were rare. Usually dry food is placed in the lower containers, curries in the middle and the dry curries and accompaniments on top. They are also convenient as each section can be used as an individual bowl, meaning no plate is needed.

With the advent of delivery apps like Zomato and Swiggy, many Indians have switched to getting restaurant food delivered to their homes and offices. The Covid-19 pandemic has also made carrying food redundant as many people work from home. But tiffin is still a traditional food habit that many Indians will carry forward, because of their preference for fresh, home-cooked food.

Mumbai’s ‘dabbawallas’ fear for their futures as coronavirus shuts down food delivery network

“Tiffin means different things in different parts of India,” said food historian Kurush Dalal. “Over time it has come to mean any snack that can be had at any time from a box.

“To a South Indian it means a light meal at teatime or breakfast. To me, who lives in Mumbai, it means the container or the stacked tiffin boxes that are ferried around carrying food to the workplace,” he said, referring to the city’s famous dabbawallas, who use bicycles and trains to deliver colour-coded, stacked tiffin carriers to office workers with clockwork precision.

Several popular Bollywood films have had tiffin as a theme. Lunchbox tells an endearing story of a young housewife and an older man who are connected through a mistaken lunchbox delivery in Mumbai. They build a fantasy world together by exchanging handwritten notes in the tiffin box. In Stanley ka dabba, a teacher in the habit of eating from his students’ tiffin boxes gives a boy named Stanley an ultimatum that he will be expelled if he does not bring his lunchbox to school.

The tiffin carrier also made its way across Asia to places like Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China and Malaysia. Some are made of wood, bamboo and porcelain, and decorated with floral prints or ornamentation. Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel has a restaurant called the Tiffin Room decorated with antique tiffin carriers in glass cases, where a lavish Indian buffet is offered.

“Tiffin has moved from its humble avatar of brass tiffin boxes to swanky, insulated carriers in thermocol [polystyrene] and in Tupperware containers, but in essence is still about the luxury and essential Indian tradition of home-cooked food carried to a workplace, school or college,” said Dalal.