Dabawals, Gandhiji, and Soy-a- Eka-mai
Trip Start
Jun 25, 2007
1
19
22
Trip End
Aug 03, 2007
New Delhi, India
Monday, July 30, 2007
On our last day in Mumbai, which is a great city, we learned about and watched "the Dabawalas." What is a Dabawala you might be wondering? It simple terms it is the Lunch delivery service for Mumbai. It is one of the most complex, yet completely human operated services I have ever seen. There are neither microwaves nor refrigerators at most offices here, so to get a home cooked meal at work is not possible but for these dabawalas. Basically, 600,000 lunches are prepared by wives and are then picked up by these Dabawalas every morning form each person's home around 9 am. These lunches are packed into metal cylinders called "tiffins." Each tiffin has special markings on it to tell exactly which part of Mumbai it goes to, which street, which building, which floor, etc. The dabawalas meet at the Churchgate Train station in Mumbai with all of their picked up tiffins, redistribute them to the appropriate section, branch, division, etc. This redistribution happens a few times and by noon, all of the lunches, made fresh by their wives, have been delivered to the their husbands at the office. Then between 1-3 pm, all of the tiffins are picked up by the dabawalas and returned to the owner's homes! Impressive right, well add to that that Mumbai has the worst traffic of anywhere in India...Our DC beltway is like country stroll compared to the chaos that ensues on the road in Mumbai. The success of each lunch getting from home to the office is 99.9999%. They only make an error once every 16 million deliveries. The cost for this service is about $5 per month. Think about it...1.2 million pick-ups and deliveries of perishable items in less than 3 hours with only 5000 employees! See pics. Check out their website www.mumbaidabbawala.com
Got in to New Delhi yesterday and went to the Gandhi Smriti, place where Gandhi lived for the last 6 months of his life and place of his assassination. It was a great museum and memorial. I will let Ghandi's words and pictures tell the story. Enjoy the photos.
Finally, while carpet shopping the other day, I ran into three women from originally form Thailand. I used my limited Thai, "Sawathi Kup" to greet them. Two still lived in Thailand. One was the headmaster at the International School in Bangkok; another was the wife of the Belgium Ambassador. While chatting with them, I mentioned my family lived in Thailand in the 60's and that my wife and I had been to Thailand for a week back in 2002. Then I said, my parents lived on Soya-ekami Street in Bangkok. The headmaster said, "that is where I live!!!" Soya is the street and Ekame means "63." She lived a few houses down from there on 58 Soya and the other lady lived on 71 Soya. I was like wow what a small world, but then it got even better. She said where are you form and I said the Washington DC Area. She said, "that's where I grew up before coming to Thailand." She lived in Silver Spring, MD on University Boulevard! She also knew Jim Thompson, the man who was the silk king in Thailand and whom house Sorsha and I visited back in 2002.
Off the Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow!
Comments
so interesting
sounds like the adventures continue. the dabawalas (sp?) are fascinating...i wonder what the accuracy rate for our fast food/take out is? so when do you head back? keep enjoying your time. the next school year is already upon us! talk to you soon - Jen H.