Devil’s Advocate: Serving you a cocktail of wit, humour and sarcasm
After you’ve ordered food online, using the food delivery app, don’t be shocked if you hear neighing sounds outside your front door shortly thereafter. Your food ordered is now being delivered to you by the delivery man on horseback!!
This is no horseplay! On 2nd Jan 2024, citizens of Hyderabad, India, witnessed the unique sight of a man riding a horse on the busy streets, with a Zomato food delivery bag on his back, on his way to delivering food orders. Riding a horse? Haven’t the days of the horse and buggy long gone along with the dodos?
Let’s hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Said the man, “Petrol nahi mila bhai. Teen ghante line me khada raha. Zomato se nikal gaya…petrol nahi mila (There was no petrol for my motorbike. I waited in the queue for three hours. I left after taking the Zomato order but couldn’t get the petrol).”
The reason for the fuel shortage was due to the truckers’ strike in the city. The truck drivers were protesting a proposed law that would impose heavy fines and 10-year jail sentences in hit-and-run incidents. This caused long queues at petrol pumps in the city and traffic jams.
In the recently concluded COP 28 meeting in Dubai, the COP 28 President Sultan Al Jaber had said “phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world back into caves”. His prediction is coming true!!
It is advised not to change horses midstream i.e from a motor bike delivery to a horse delivery but in this case, it worked out well for the Zomato customers who are always so hungry that they could eat a horse! But Zomato has a strict policy that customers cannot touch their horses!
Before we start commenting on this unorthodox mode of delivery, let’s get off our high horses & hold our horses!
This is an excellent example of the great Indian “jugaad”, the dark horse, whose hacks involve ingenuity and innovation in a frugal way. It makes horse sense!
Hardly anyone cooks these days, thanks to the convenience of ordering food using apps. But home-delivered food comes with a climate cost due to the use of single-use packaging and fossil fuels used in the deliveries. Australians placed 27 million online food orders in 2018. By 2024, this number is projected to increase to 65 million increasing the carbon footprint even larger. Humans are indeed causing climate change!
Humans and horses share a special bond which can be traced back to the domestication of horses around 6,000 years ago. Horses have provided humans with the means to expand their territories, engage in trade, and wage war. Horse riding has a number of health benefits such as good cardiovascular workout, improving core strength, burning calories, lowering blood pressure and relaxation and now horses can be a solution for stopping climate change!
Delivering food on horseback is indeed the most eco-friendly and sustainable way of doing it. The horse needs no electricity or fossil fuels to function. Evil coal and demonic fossil fuels, both of which have contributed to the progress made by the human civilisation so far are now threatening the very existence of Earth and life. But it may be difficult to get the tick of approval from Greta Thunberg & Licypriya Kangujam, the climate activists and guardians of the Earth, whose hobby horse is climate change. Horse farts release methane into the air which will cause global warming, they would argue.
The PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) mob would object to this mode of delivery because they would consider this solution to be a Trojan horse which would result in animal cruelty. Reasoning with PETA would be like flogging a dead horse as they do no horse trading. You can take a horse to the water but cannot make it drink!
The horse can play a significant role in our lives, if we do not put the cart before the horse. Remember Shakespeare’s Richard III’s lament, “My kingdom for a horse,” bemoaning his lack of a horse during a losing battle?
It is now the right time to ditch our petrol/diesel cars and get back on the horse saddles and giddy up to save the world. The only drawback would be that you will have to pick up the horse poop along the way.
By replacing the engine horsepower with real horse power, we are betting on the right horse.
Zomato’s tagline, “Never have a bad meal” should be now changed to “Eat like a horse.”
Horses for courses!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
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