What a shame! Another young life taken away by cancer. This was what went through my mind when I saw the news about the death of Poonam Pandey on Daily Mirror. In fact, I was a bit confused, because the Daily Mirror had said Poonam was an actor in the headline itself. But the article had a picture of what seemed like a female. “Well, these are modern times, where one cannot say if a person is a he, a she, or an it” was my response, and shrugged off any future thoughts about this situation away.
But then my Twitter feed began to fill with various posts about how all this was a scam. An online campaign done by a digital agency to create awareness of “Cervical Cancer”.
Wow! That was my first response.
It was not a wow of admiration though.
Faking a person's death is generally associated with Insurance Fraud or Major Criminals and Gangsters who want to disappear from the face of the earth.
But now it is used for communication purposes.
Suddenly a quote from the book Shanthram came to mind. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong — that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.”
Yes, most definitely people have now heard about cervical cancer which can be easily cured.
But this truth has been based on a lie.
We have played with people’s emotions. We have also diluted the trust people place on sources they gather information from online.
There is a thin line between a good campaign and an absolute disaster. To me sadly this is a disaster.
