One of the most efficient organisations in Mumbai is Mumbai Dabbawallah Inc. Their history, methodology and efficiency have been dissected in great detail. Even the British heir apparent, Prince Charles called on them and even invited them for his wedding. But is their efficiency really a boon?
I hate them for their efficiency and perhaps they have not realised that their profession is one of the few where some inefficiency would be welcome.
With their six sigma standards, they make only one mistake in 60,00,000 deliveries. Their website states that they make 1,75,000 deliveries a day. Excluding Saturdays and Sundays there are about 250 working days in a year.
That means they make only about seven mistakes a year. In forty years. which is a normal career life, they will make only about 300 mistakes and I could very well NOT be one of them, because the probability of being one is 0.0,000,002,857. Goodness! This means I am virtually 'sentenced' to eat the food cooked by my dharmpatni for my entire office life. In any case I have to eat breakfast and dinner made by her.
Oh kismat, oh badnaseebi, what hast thou done to me? Shouldn't they come down to Sigma 4 or even 3 levels and make mistakes more often so that at least once or twice a month everyone gets a dabba cooked by someone else's spouse?
The Bible says: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife (should be 'spouse' now, in these days of gender neutrality) but surely I can covet the neighbour's wife's dabba at least. Will the media please bring this to the attention of the dabbawallahs?
It will put much-needed spice, (literally), into office life and perhaps improve the spouses' culinary performance. Imagine opening a dabba and finding someone else's food. Give the same dabbas and same items sent by ten women, including my wife, and I can tell you which one she has packed. A wife's dabba is like her fingerprint. I can go home and describe what I ate, how it tasted, how I think the dabbawalli will be and so on and so forth. In fact, I am reminded of a new version of an old Bollywood song:
Yeh roti kiski hai, yeh mithai kiski hai,
woh kaisi hogi jiski dabba ithna achcha hai.
PS: Only they should not err between vegetarian and non-vegetarian dabbas. I am a tandoori chicken-eating brahmin, but bird flu has made me cautious. So, dabbawallahs listen to my plea.
