One may never know how it would feel to be dead when one is actually dead—philosophical speculations aside—but the victims of such deathhoax certainly get to know how it feels to be dead in other’s eyes.
The pandemic nature of social media leaves little room for doubt when death hoaxes of celebrities do rounds there until someone with clout rebuffs them.
Recently, ailing Bollywood star Shashi Kapur became a victim to death hoaxes on the internet. Earlier, Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Chan and Honey Singh and scores of other stars have suffered in the hands of such rumour mills.
Apart from mischief, there seems to be no other reason for the origin of such hoax in the first place. People forward messages to one another because they care, the problem is that the etiquette of social media demands nothing but speediness in sharing, and the trouble is that such haste leaves little courtesy for cross checking facts. Only love and care for the apparently dead matter, so the mathematics of untimely, if not misplaced commiseration suggests the popularity of the concerned victim. To know about how much you were mourned when one is still alive, I don’t know, if that fact acts as any kind of balm for the fear of certainty called death, whose only constant is its uncertain timing.
Back then in the eighties, in a remote town of Odisha, one fine morning a rumour spread about the sudden death of a young healthy high school boy. The absence of social media notwithstanding, the sad news spread like wildfire, thanks to the vehicle of mouth and small geographical outer limits. People who knew the family thronged to his house, his teachers, classmates and neighbours. People who did not know the boy, when heard about his death, enquired about him, how he lookedIJ Was he good at studiesIJ Was he mischievousIJ Thankfully, his oral report card that travelled through rumour read well to his favour.
His grieving parents sadly informed the visitors to their home that the news of death had come from their village, which was in a far off district, and that the boy had reportedly died there of meningitis the previous night. A two minutes’ silence was observed in the class, before the headmaster declared half a day’s holiday for the school, which all the classes merrily acknowledged, hustling out being thankful to their late friend for the day off.
Amazingly, a week later the dead walked alive from the very house in the town where he had been hiding all this time with the help of his family members, more suave in his rebirth, directly descending at the same age in which he was said to have unfortunately died. There was an excuse on the lips of his family members, who blamed it on the crows who had perched on their roof top in the morning on that eventful day, whose mating the boy had seen. The superstition, which is still prevalent in many parts of the region, was that watching the mating of the house crows was very ominous and that it might invite death. In order to fool death, a death hoax must do a round.
Superstition though, but it was a welcome relief to know that the boy was hale and hearty. But sadly destiny had other plans for him. But that is another story.
However, the internet hoaxes are nothing but deliberate mischief. Though no one takes them seriously once it is known that the news that circulated like wildfire on social media was actually a hoax, yet an apology is due to the family of the star concerned. Naturally, the culprit who started it all would never surface to acknowledge his misdeed, but some decency is accepted from the well-meaning people who might be unconsciously a part in advancing the hoax forward, even though innocuously. The question is— have we ever seen a corrigendum to the effect being circulated on social sites with similar enthusiasmIJ Probably the answer is no, and this defeats the anxiety premise in the motive behind the spread of the hoax. Time is to go for restraints when one receives any such foreboding message and never be a part of this unwarranted netiquette.
(The writer is District Information and Public Relations Officer, Ganjam; Email: gurbirwrites@gmail.com; Mobile: 9439871179)