(Charles' wedding to Camilla)

Four guests certain to appear on the rescheduled date are among Charles's more quixotic invitees.

snip

....confirmed are Raghunath Medge and Sopan More, leading members of the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association — a.k.a. bike-riders who deliver boxed lunches to workers — whom Charles met in India in 2003 and took a fancy to.

"It's like a dream come true," Medge told reporters in Mumbai. "If the prince wants us to, we will take him some food: chapati, sabji and dal."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1112910612066&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

I imagine the Indian media will pick this up soon enough, wondering what they'll headline it as...

And this is what the Forbes magazine has written about the "Mumbai dabbawallas" in one of their 1998 issues.


Efficient organization" is not the first thought that comes to mind in India, but when the profit motive is given free rein, anything is possible. To appreciate Indian efficiency at its best, watch the tiffinwallahs at work.


These are the men who deliver 175,000 lunches (or "tiffin" each day to offices and schools throughout Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the business capital of India. Lunch is in a tin container consisting of a number of bowls, each containing a separate dish, held together in a frame. The meals are prepared in the homes of the people who commute into Mumbai each morning and delivered in their own tiffin carriers. After lunch, the process is reversed.


And what a process it is -- despite the complexity, the 5,000 tiffinwallahs make a mistake only about once every two months, according to Ragunath Medge, 42, president of the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association.


That's one error in every 8 million deliveries, or 16 million if you include the return trip. "If we made 10 mistakes a month, no one would use our service," says the craggily handsome Medge.


How do they do it?


The meals are picked up from commuters' homes in suburbs around central Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters return.


Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols which identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered.


After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination station. Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. they are loaded in crates onto the baggage cars of trains.


At the destination station they are unloaded by other tiffinwallahs and resorted, this time according to street address and floor. The 100- kilogram crates of carriers, carried on tiffinwallahs' heads, hand- wagons and cycles are delivered at 12:30 p.m., picked up at 1:30 p.m., and returned whence they came.


The charge for this extraordinary service is just 150 rupees ($3.33) per month, enough for the tiffinwallahs, who are mostly self-employed, to make a good living. After paying Rs60 per crate and Rs120 per man per month to the Western Railway for transport, the average tiffinwallah clears about Rs3, 250.


Of that sum, Rs10 goes to the Tiffinmen's Association. After minimal expenses, the rest of the Rs50,000 a month that the Association collects go to a charitable trust that feeds the poor.


Superb service and charity too. Can anyone ask for more?