Dharma and Karma

Two incidents on twitter made me write this post here.


Incident 1


It was 12.37 AM in the night, BH read a tweet and said "Sh*t! Someone is in great pain and trouble. Lets see how we can help out and ran out of the room." He looked concerned. I ensured Bunni is in deep sleep and closed the door behind me to understand what the matter was. BH showed me these tweets.

He looked for highway police-station numbers in Rajkot, many other police stations numbers in Rajkot. None of the numbers on the net were CORRECT! Damn! While there were other tweeples who were skeptical about this incident. There were many tweets going around. Like why is he trying to reach people on twitter instead of calling family and friends? How is he tweeting with that kind-of injury etc. etc.

BH cared about none. He tried reaching out to people who were into media, he thought that would garner some help. While few people on his time-line said, that it is a fake-accident and you  are wasting time, energy and sleep by thinking of helping him. BH said "We should not miss wood for trees. What if he really needs some help? If he is faking, it is his karma. I will do what I can, that is dharma." I nodded. 
By that time, we saw more tweets on the timeline of the victim.

"Ah. Someone helps. I could not have slept on such things. Come lets sleep." 


We slept. Next day, he completely forgot. I kept track of this incident. There was a person who believed this was a fake accident. He worked day and night to find out a few things. And tweets from Ramesh Solanki, Mumbai Secretary, and Gujarat Rajya Sampark Pramukh BVS/SHIVSENA cleared much of the doubts. Here is the snap shot.

I was shocked! Why would someone raise such false alarms?  Just for some attention? Followers? (Ofcourse, his follower count raised from 93 to 270 during that incident.) But, I really wanted to believe that the world is naive. 


Many people including BH had called 100 and 108 to reach out to this "supposed" victim. Complaint has been lodged to the cyber police with some proofs and official reports by a person on Twitter. I told BH the whole story when he came back.


BH: As he sows, so shall he reap. Why bother?
Me: Will you help someone like this again after knowing this? 
BH: Yes. Certainly. There are 100s of requests for blood. I RT (Retweet - Twitter lingo - a form of sharing in twitter.) them faithfully, if mine does not match. I have known people personally who have really wanted help. So, I will do my bit by sharing. What happens next, is left to their destiny.


So, this matter did end. For us at least. 


Incident 2


18 year old high school student Ashley Billasano tweeted 144 times, in the span of 6 hours before commiting suicide. She had 500 followers! NONE took her seriously?! I do not know the handle of the girl, to paste the tweets. I read this article online. You can read it here. 
Why did nobody help her? If people like Sachin raise false SOS calls. Many would ignore such tweets. Probably. 


In the ending note, world is a curious mixture of people. So, difficult to take a call on social responsibilities.