Rags to Riches

 Rags To Riches 

The plethora of assumptions made about how people live in India is an excellent example of the way we limit ourselves in our thinking. By reading and watching the news we assume we understand India. Only by experiencing the daily life that is lived in India can one really appreciate the vast differences culturally between poverty and how the rich live.  This challenges the notion that anyone in America can live in a poor economic state. The poor in the US are richer than around 70% of all the people extent.

                                                   

Dabba Wallahs  - Lunch anyone? 100 year old lunch delivery-

Every day in Mumbai some 500 men called Dobba Wallahs hand deliver 200,000 hot lunches to doorsteps across the city from home kitchens.  The century old service is a staple for the city's office workers.  The Dabba Wallahs have a huge network and intricate system by which the lunch packed from the home is picked up each morning in thousands of homes  and strapped to a bicycle that is ridden and hand delivered to the train station. The lunches are then put on a special train cargo for fish , lunches and suitcases only and shipped to the city. The lunches can be transported several times before reaching their prospective area and then they are sorted on the street for delivery to the office where the owner can enjoy their lunch. Before he leaves , the delivery man collects yesterdays container and the process starts all over again for tomorrow.  The Dabba Wallah receives about $10.00 per month to deliver the lunches each day per person. We were able to observe the sorting of the lunches in the city as well as have our picture taken with one of the Dabba Wallahs. Crazy- why not pick up your lunch kit and carry it to work yourself, right!