JodockWorldTravel

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Mumbai is a city of extremes.  It is home to both the most expensive home in the world – a 27-story, 400,000 square foot monstrosity valued at between one and two BILLION dollars (6 stories, by the way, are just for cars) – and the world’s second largest slum.  It is the wealthiest city in India with the highest number of millionaires and billionaires.  At the same time 55 percent of its population (over 1 million people) live in slums and 25 percent live on less than $1.25/day.  Those living in the slums are hard-working people; there are 5,000 business and 15,000 factories located within the slums. 

Mumbai is also home to the Dabbawalas, a unique lunch deliver service that has been in operation for more than 130 years.  Every day around 10:00 a.m. men riding bicycles and pushing carts collect tiffins (stackable metal tins filled with food) from homes as far as 30 miles away and deliver them to the nearest railway station.  The tiffins contain no names or addresses – of the sender or the recipient.  They are labeled using a system of symbols and colors indicating where the tiffin is picked up, which train station it is going to and the final address where it is to be delivered.  The tiffins travel on the train and are met at the other end by another set of Dabbawalas who load them up and deliver them in time for lunch.  In 130 years not one lunch has ever been late.  This all started when a single banker decided he’d like to have home-cooked meals for lunch in his office. He hired a gentleman to pick lunch up from his wife and deliver it to him every day.  Now 200,000 lunches are delivered every day.  Pretty impressive!