Lunchbox Legends: Dabbawalas of Mumbai, SFU 's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Thursday July 10, 6 p.m.
Dinner By Starlight: Vikram Vij with guests of honour the Dabbawalas of Mumbai, on Saturday, July 12 at 7 p.m. in secret location (revealed to ticket holders two days in advance of the event). For more details and complete schedule of Indian Summer Festival go to indiansummerfestival.ca.
Positioned atop a bicycle, the package cuts a path through the winding alleys and broad thoroughfares to its destination in Mumbai.
A man in a white uniform hands off the package to a another man in a white uniform who hops aboard a train.
The package passes under both the shadows of colonial era relics and the piercing light of India's new cyber-tecture.
The package changes hands, and changes hands again in an office tower, where finally it can be opened and eaten.
Using a colour-coded system, a team of 5,000 Indian entrepreneurs deliver 200,000 home-cooked lunches to 200,000 office workers every day.
The couriers are called Dabbawalas - out of every six million deliveries, they get one wrong.
Representatives from the 125-year-old organization are scheduled to enjoy the finest fare stovetop specialist Vikram Vij can conjure up in Dinner By Starlight, scheduled for July 12.
When speaking with Vij, a conversation about what he plans to cook for the meal (vegetable curry and a few surprises) quickly turns into a family memory.
"Every Indian lady is a great cook," Vij says.
He's reminiscing about a few relatives, but the woman on his mind is his aunt.
She cooked with only two or three spices, but that was all she needed, Vij recalls.
The rhythm of Vij's voice slows down as he describes how she used to butter "beautiful toast" and top it with "the best fried egg you've ever had."
"She used to cook it with so much love," he marvels.
The words 'love' and 'passion' pepper Vij's speech when he talks about food.
A restaurateur with locations in Vancouver and Surrey, Vij is also the proprietor behind a brand of frozen curries.
His ascendancy seems to have coincided with the growing stature of chefs in North American culture, but Vij's stovetop prowess may be encoded in his DNA.
"What runs in the family is the attention to detail, attention to the spices," he explains. "It could be as a simple as. .. a vegetable curry but as long as it's made with a lot of love and passion, who cares?" The food, the service and the ambience of a restaurant should all be extensions of the chef, Vij explains.
"My philosophy is that, 'You come to my house and I'm going to take care of you.'" His philosophy also colours his method for preparing a menu.
"I come up with a style, I look at the whole menu and say, 'If I was a vegetarian what would I like? If I was a meat-eater what would I like?'" he says.
While he may trust a fellow chef or a family member, he ultimately designs a dish based on his own "gut feeling."
Vij speaks to the North Shore News after spending the morning trying to wrangle a deal with a store he's hoping will shelve his frozen curries and the afternoon perfecting a new addition to his menu.
When explaining his work/life balance, Vij mentions his annual vacations to India, as well as trips to Peru and Turkey, which all turn into research trips.
"I go there as a student, I don't go there as a chef," he says. "I try to learn how to cook food from chefs and from people, just so I can bring it back."
The demands of maintaining an empire won't take Vij from the kitchen.
"The balance is in my hands. I can do as much as I want or as little as I want," he says.
