The Mumbai Dabbawalla

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I'd rather play a board game with an impish five year old

Than go to Board Room Meetings and greet folks who trade in gold

A little kid wont mince her words and say what's on her mind

Unlike the men in tailored suits with whom I've wined and dined

 

They use their corporate jargon to launch their next campaign

With clichéd buzzword phrases their mantra they'll explain

They swirl around in swivel chairs and talk of strategies

Sophisticated gibberish - there 'lies' their expertise

 

While on their working lunches they try to sound profound

They throw in words like six-sigma while they muck around

They talk of multi-tasking and think outside the box

While climbing up the greasy pole their best friends they'll outfox

 

They leverage their assets and gobbledygook speak

Talk techno mumbo-jumbo to add to their mystique

They love to paradigm shift as well as circle back

Talk about downsizing but wont use words like sack

 

They spout some empty rhetoric deployed with Ninja skill

Like deluded Sancho Panzas they'll encounter their windmill

With pseudo words and acronyms and thoughtless vapid prose

They twist themselves in verbal knots with muddled metaphors

 

At times I feel these sycophants could learn a thing or two

From the humble dabbawalla whom it's hard to live up to

Every day in Mumbai, 5000 men in white

Transport lunches all around and always get it right

 

Unlike the Saville Rowe clothed men who bootlick every boss

And praise the naked emperor adorned in velvet gloss

They don't guerrilla market, drill-down or blue sky think

Don't talk of bleeding edges, synergies or data link

 

In 16 mill transactions, their error rate is 1

I'd say that's quite impressive - a job for sure well done

200,000 lunches are transported each day

Stifling heat or drenching rain - they reach with no delay

 

They pick up meals from workers homes and colour code each box

A system that has worked without pretentious boardroom talks

On local trains or cycles or crates upon their head

This team of men deliver where elitists fear to tread

 

This semi-literate workforce is simple to the core

Work in a relay system while they move from door to door

Devoid of verbal flatulence and cryptic dialect

These  'salt of the earth' people  deserve all our respect.

Snippets under Spotlight