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Published: March 18th 2006
There was no hot water this morning, which made no sense as I hadn't touched the set-up at all since having a shower yesterday, but it turned out the cleaning man had unilaterally decided to turn off the inlet pipe. With that resolved, I headed off to Victoria Terminus, subsequently renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus but commonly known as VT, a highpoint in Raj-era architecture in Mumbai. It was certainly impressive and encompassed a variety of different styles. The exterior was covered with numerous sculptures of assorted flora and fauna, including mythical creatures such as griffins. Oh - and about 2 million people pass through it every day, boarding or disembarking from 1,000 trains.
While searching for a lunch place, I passed Churchgate Station, itself no mean bit of architecture, and spotted a number of members of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust, more commonly and famously known as dabawallahs. This organisation fills the role of transporting a couple of hundred thousand home-cooked meals every day from domestic kitchens in the suburbs to offices in downtown. Using colour codes on the various tins, lunchboxes and bags that the food is transported in, the dabawallahs know exactly where a
VT
Detailparticular meal has to be delivered to. They do this sufficiently brilliantly that Forbes magazine awarded their operation a 6-Sigma performance rating, meaning that only 1 meal in 6 million goes astray. In the local paper, I also read about dabawallahs acting as consultants to other companies in order to help them improve their efficiency.
After this, I headed up to Crawford Market and roamed around the maze of streets in the surrounding bazaar, eventually finding the Mumba Devi temple after which Mumbai is named. At this point, in the early afternoon, I was whacked so I jumped in a cab and returned to the hotel for a snooze.
Come the evening, I had developed a rare craving for pizza, so I cabbed over to The Pizzeria on Marine Drive - the opposite side of Mumbai from Colaba. Post-pizza, I went next door to Not Just Jazz On The Bay for a beer, but it was pretty much deserted initially. After meeting two Scottish guys from Glasgow, we returned to The Pizzeria in order to avoid the karaoke night that was just starting up in the bar, and exchanged travelling stories until the wee small hours. Fortunately I
Dabawallahs
Deftly delivering delicious domestic dinners downtown arrived back at the hotel just as another guest was ringing the bell, so my reputation was not further tarnished.
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