Pundit’s day out: on the Kamaraj-Hitesha Zomato row

All social media needs is a little spat and lo, a whole garden of armchair critics comes into bloom

A couple of weeks ago, a video was posted on Instagram from Bengaluru, where an influencer named Hitesha accused a Zomato delivery man named Kamaraj of assaulting her after an argument over a late delivery. She then rode a sympathy wave which allegedly gave her some 10,000 extra followers. But within a couple of days Kamaraj refuted her claim, saying it was Hitesha who had abused and hit him. Did Kamaraj abuse her and punch her nose? Or did Hitesha abuse him and hit him with slippers? Nobody really knows, but FIRs have been registered against both. As the news broke, it was amusing to see how easily people were making up their minds and as quickly changing them. It was also amusing to see the simplistic sorts of tribalism that immediately came to the fore. First came commiseration for a customer, hailed as ‘king’ (or ‘queen’ in this case), being shabbily treated by a delivery executive, so there was much tagging of Zomato. As Kamaraj’s version came out, the wave swung towards him, quickly morphing into a class debate — middle-class versus working class. Paeans were written about why one must always believe the hard-working salt of the earth and not privileged middle-class occupants of apartment blocks.