Food delivery company Zomato’s recent attempt to introduce a dedicated fleet for delivering vegetarian food, distinguishable by green jerseys instead of the usual red shirts, faced significant backlash, with many dubbing it as blatant casteism. After being heavily called out, the restaurant aggregator hastily scrapped the colour-coding plan to prevent potential harassment of its regular delivery personnel who wear red.
Meanwhile, author and columnist Twinkle Khanna recently shared her two cents on the debate and emphasised the importance of effective communication in avoiding misunderstandings.
Likening the art of communication to building a rope bridge, Twinkle Khanna, in her Mrs Funnybones column in the Times of India, noted that at times, even after tying a rock to the string to give it heft and aiming carefully, it might end up falling into the ravine, or the rock might hit the other person’s head, causing a rift.
Further mentioning that Zomato did only what any successful entrepreneurs do — see an unfulfilled need, service it and make a profit — she asserted that the issue began with the “segregation of food into pure and impure”. While on the surface, Twinkle pointed out, the move seemed like a solution intended for people with “specific dietary requirements”, she asserted that underneath the said layer, they (the Zomato people) forgot that ‘pure-veg’, unlike vegetarian or vegan, “has connotations of caste, hierarchy and untouchability.”
She further emphasised that communication is a serrated tool that can be a healing scalpel or a dagger, depending on the intent vs impact discourse. Twinkle also recalled how she, as a young woman, found it particularly hard to communicate and turned to Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ for help, which only yielded disastrous results.
“Words, not just in hymns and love songs, but even typed on a public forum can affect us unexpectedly, like the folks at Zomato now realise with their usage of the term ‘pure-veg’: a single hyphenated expression capable of stirring up deep emotions,” she underscored, recalling a message she once received on social media from a mother diagnosed with terminal cancer and how it formed a connection between them, despite having never met each other.
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