They battled through the streets of Mumbai to deliver workers' lunches during devastating 2005 floods, and kept working even as Islamist extremists laid siege to the city nearly three years ago.
But today, Mumbai's 'dabbawallahs' voluntarily stopped work for the first time in more than a century in support of a man embarking on a hunger strike against corruption.
Several hundred of the 5,000 or so tiffin box carriers gathered at the busy Churchgate station in the city's south, shouting slogans in support of activist Anna Hazare and waving the Indian tricolour before marching through the streets.
'Anna Hazare, we're with you!' cried the dabbawallahs, most of them dressed in their distinctive white cotton homespun uniforms and Nehru caps.
'Bharatmata ki jai! (Hail Mother India)' they shouted.
'This is the first time in 120 years that we've not worked,' said Kailash Sonwa Karanda, 40, who normally delivers up to 40 tiffins (steel lunchboxes) of home-cooked food to hungry office workers every day.
'We've come to support Anna Hazare. Corruption affects everyone, particularly the common man,' he told AFP.
The dabbawallahs have become a symbol of India's financial and entertainment capital, famous for the efficiency with which they deliver food to some 200,000 people every day, six days a week.
Business magazine Forbes once awarded them a 'six sigma' rating, meaning that they have an error rate as low as one per one million deliveries, ranking them alongside some of the top businesses in the world.
Fans of the dabbawallahs, who use trains, handcarts and bicycles to deliver towers of tiffins to offices and homes using a complex colour-coded system and 10-digit alpha-numeric code, include Virgin tycoon Richard Branson.
Britain's Prince Charles even invited two dabbawallahs to his wedding to his second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, in 2005 after they sent the couple a wedding present.
The dabbawallahs, who earn up to 6,000 rupees (€90) a month, said they decided to stop work after Hazare was detained by police in New Delhi on Tuesday, sparking opposition support and street protests.
Ashok Sathod Satpute, a tiffin carrier for the past 15 years, said Hazare's stand against graft was something that cut across all sections of society.
'Corruption in the government system, whether it's getting ration cards or having to pay a 'donation' to get our kids into school, the problem affects everyone, even us,' he said.
'What Anna Hazare is doing is against corruption. We supply food to nearly two lakh (200,000) customers. They're saying we should support him, so we're doing it for our customers and we're doing it for ourselves.
'We represent the common man, so it's only right that we join him.'
AFP
