Brotherhood of Opportunists

The publicity-hungry dabbawallas of Mumbai are willing allies in the Sena’s war on Mistry

Until 2 October this year, the only Mistry that Raghunath Medge, chief of the famous Mumbai dabbawalas, had heard of was probably one of his customers. That changed when Bal Thackeray’s grandson Aditya Thackeray burnt copies of Rohinton Mistry’s book Such A Long Journey. For the Sena pointed out that there were not only derogatory mentions about the party, but also Mumbai’s dabbawalas in Mistry’s book.

An angry Medge and his dabbawalabrigade are now protesting against the “insult heaped upon them”. They have only seen a picture of the book in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna. That the Sena is co-opting the dabbawallas into the issue because it needs ‘honourable’ allies is also evident. We also don’t know whether Medge is able to comprehend the insulting passages in the book, since Saamna has picked up a few English phrases (such as sweating pigs) and translated it into the vitriolic Marathi that the Shiv Sena is adept at. All that Medge knows is that “something terrible has been written about dabbawalas”.

It is true that dabbawalas do a great service to Mumbai by transporting ghar ka khana to thousands of hungry office-goers. Their efficiency is part of the syllabus in business schools. All this is fine, but lurking under the surface is also an addiction to publicity. Many years ago, when Prince Charles was to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, dabbawallas decided to gift a nine-yard sari to Camilla and Kolhapuri slippers to Charles. The media was called to witness them purchasing the sari from a shop in Dadar, Mumbai. Followed by TV cameras, Medge and his group looked around the shop for four hours and finally selected one. When the shopkeeper started to make a bill, Medge held up his hand. They would book the sari now and collect it later.

Some days later, when I called up the shop to do a follow-up, an angry shopkeeper told me that he had not heard from those dabbawallas. It had all been a publicity stunt. We published the story in the newspaper I worked with back then. The rest of the media picked it up and they had to buy the sari. They then took the media to the post office to watch them courier it to Buckingham Palace. This lust for publicity is what the Shiv Sena is now exploiting.

About The Author

Haima Deshpande