Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Save our Souls: We are Indians, firstly and lastly.

As I was scouring through my photo roll searching for my latest DP, a picture happened to catch my eye.

It had inadvertently reached my album through the whatsapp downloads. It screamed of a national pride "Arvind Kejriwal as Time magazine's person of the year". I did feel proud since the AAP has been my only hope this Lok Sabha elections. But alas. This feeling was short lived. 

I somehow have a penchant for not easily accepting so called facts. 
My search through the Time magazine links revealed the true facts. 

Time has it's annual feature where it declares the most influential person of the year. Though it is preceded by an online opinion poll, the final decision is a jury based nomination. Our favorite AK (definitely not referring to Aamir Khan), has for sure topped the opinion poll with a big margin. This is no mean achievement. He thus found his way to the Time 100, which is the top 100 list of most influential people of the year declared on April 24, 2014. 

However, Beyonce Knowles, found herself on the US cover and Robert Redford, Jason Collins and Mary Barra on its international covers.

So, Mahatma Gandhi, back in 1930, still remains the only Indian to feature as the Time -person of the year, till date. 

This reminded me of a similar hoax message that was doing the rounds few months back.

When India Today wrote to the UNESCO asking for details and clarifications regarding this 'announcement', Sue Williams (Chief, Editorial, Press Relations and Unesco Courier, Bureau of Public Information, Unesco) wrote back that no such award has been announced. 

So why is this elaborate hoax?

If you would have clicked on any of the images,
you would have been directed to the registration page of a yahoo groups site called 'MumbaiHangOut'.

Vested interests ??


Sure, these are achievements you would have thought. But why have there been no official announcements or any celebrations? After all it was a UNESCO or TIME award, and not a joke.

But that is exactly what these are. Rather imprudent jokes, playing with the sentiment of millions of Indians.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Just Dial - Tread with care

It's election fever pan India. everybody is taking help of the social media  to get their thoughts across. It could be for personal gain or a part of social activism. Not to be left far behind, I thought I should also join the circuit, albeit for a different cause. 
The subject here may not be that important, but it is quite relevant to our medical fraternity. This message needs to reach far and wide at the earliest to stop this farcical practice initiated by JUST DIAL- one of the finest search engines. 

The incident came to light yesterday when a close doc friend of mine who was leisurely holidaying abroad, called me - panic stricken. He reported some unruly behavior happening at his clinic and asked me to look into the matter.  
Apparently, a couple of patients had been given appointments for his consultation through the services of Just Dial even though the doctor was on leave. These patients were creating a ruckus outside the clinic premises claiming that the appointment was routed through JD but was given by the doctor's secretary. There seemed to be something spooky about this whole affair since the secretary in question blatantly denied giving any such fixtures as the doctor was on a planned vacation. 
It was up to my sleuthing to uncover this shady business. I called up the Just Dial service at 10 PM, wanting to get the contact number of Dr Shabbir Baldiwala. I was very politely asked if JD could book an appointment for me. Since I agreed, they apparently transferred the line to a person, some Mr Vijendra who claimed to be Dr Baldiwala's secretary. I asked for a Saturday appointment knowing fully well that the clinic is closed for consulting on Saturdays. I was promptly given a time for 5 PM. When I tried to reconfirm whether the doc would be available on Saturday, I was told by Vijendra that the time was confirmed since he was speaking from the clinic itself. Phew. 

Messages were exchanged and the appointment booked. The SMS sent to Dr Baldiwala does mention the client's phone number. So it is now the doctor's job to call up the patient and make the necessary clarifications. In all this exercise, who is being inconvenienced? The patient, the doctors or both??

Just Dial needs to answer this question before it is slapped with the CPA.