This may also be spelled as "doodhwallah". Literally taken, this means
"milkman". It is composed of two Hindi words, "doodh", which
means "milk" and "wala" (or "wallah") which means "person
associated with". In the west, people generally purchase their milk by driving to a grocery store owned by an impersonal large corporation. In most of India though, milk is still hand delivered to houses by the doodhwala and the personal touch generally makes people want to talk to him. Since the typical doodhwala visits all the houses in an area, he knows all the latest neighborhood gossip and rumors. Thus in BRF parlance, when a member posts something like "My doodhwala says that ..." or "According to my doodhwala, ...", it means that he or she is reporting some unofficial inside information which cannot be independently verified at the moment. The source is usually some close relative or friend connected with the project in question, e.g. an engineer, mechanic, manager, accountant etc. To protect the insider and avoid revealing how he/she is connected to the project, the BRFite reports the source as "the doodhwala" a.k.a. the milkman instead. Sometimes the information may be true or it may just be an empty rumor. Also see: |