Friday, March 21, 2008

The Dabawallahs

Everyday, these guys go to 200,000 suburban households and pick up hot meals prepared by mothers and wives and deliver them to office workers throughout Mumbai. With the grueling traffic and overflowing trains that most commuters face everyday, getting lunch delivered to your workspace from home has got to be a nice thing. The lunches are carried in cylindrical aluminum tins that stack on top of one another. And because many of the dabawallahs are illiterate, they use a sophisticated system of numbers and colors to indicate where the meal must be delivered. The really impressive aspect of their work is the level of efficiency that they attain. According to Forbes, only one tin in 6 million does not arrive safely to the correct son or husband.

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