A cool short documentary on Mumbai's dabbawalas (lunch deliverers)
About 5000 dabbawalas ply the streets of Mumbai daily; they deliver about a quarter million lunches from homes to offices. The dabbawalas drop by subscribers' houses in the mid-morning to pick up the food, which they pack in these cool little stainless steel thermos like things (dabba's). They take them to a central processing area, where they are dispatched for delivery at lunchtime (somewhat later here than in the US; 1:30 or 2).
Despite the fact that basically every dabbawala is illiterate, a clever color-coding scheme gives them a fantastically low misdelivery rate; a study last year found that on an average day fewer than 10 of the 250,000 lunches went to the wrong place. (There's actually a recent Bollywood romcom based on that premise; the guy and girl get each other's lunch through a dabbawala error.)
Anyways, I just found this cool video on these guys and thought I would share:
Also, notice the subways don't have doors. That's how they really are.
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