Rumours!

Wouldn’t all of us like such rumours to be spread about us?

In my case, an attempt at humour by a dear friend resulted in it becoming a fast spreading rumour which in turn became an urban legend about, hold your breath, yours truly.

When my friend Vichu met me after many years at Delhi airport, he saw me using a walking stick and wanted to know the reason. He was going to Chennai and I to Jaipur. I was just 38 years old then and it was an unusual sight for someone of that age to use a walking stick. I explained to him the reason that I had damaged my hip joints and had to get them replaced soon, he could not believe me. He decided to crack a joke about it when he met my brother in Chennai after that eventful meeting and quipped that I had jumped out of a second floor flat to escape from a husband who had come unexpectedly and had fractured my hip joints. My unsuspecting and naive brother believed that story and it became a family legend first and then when I came to know of it, I started using it myself as part of my repertoire of humour. The connection between rumour and humour!

We are right now in the midst of our national elections and rumours of all kinds spread like wild fire thanks to modern social media networks. People have started to use social media rather than trust the mass media like TV and Newspapers as they find the latter biased in favour of one or the other side of the polarised political spectrum. This has its own pitfalls and rumours rather than facts gain credibility sometimes resulting in unintended consequences. I try and check credible sources before I decide to forward messages received in WhatsApp and Twitter and often have to stop further spreading of unverifiable information.

I personally do not start or spread rumours. Often to the bemusement of friends who love doing just that. How about you?

Please go over to Shackman’s blog to see what he has to say about this week’s 2 on 1 Friday post.