Pehchan Kaun????

This is my first post regarding Swine Flu which had gripped the beautiful “Aamchi Pune” city reporting its first death casualty of a 13 year old girl from St.Anne’s “Redaah Shaikh”. There was panic all over the city after the news flash in all leading newspapers and news channels. There was sudden increase in numbers in Naidu Hospital for getting screened. Emails’ regarding all precautions and things to do was flooding my inbox. All with dissimilar opinions.

Apart from all this, what I observed was that there was increase in the selling of masks. The hygienic mask which was sold earlier for Rs.2 was now sold for Rs.10. Imagine people, wearing mask (apart from N95 – which was actually prescribed) of different brands and different colors, everywhere. But I was happy with my handkerchief, trying to be the “Odd Man out”..

Today, I went with Jaidev to pay his house’s electricity bill. The counter was flooded with people as the swine flu fever was going down. The queue was very big. I saw such a long queue in electricity billing center for the first time. Seeing the situation, Jaidev asked me to follow up so that he can park his Enticer. Standing there and looking at the crowd I saw a person with a mask waving at me. I could not recognize him as there were people standing behind me thinking it might be for one of them. I ignored him by looking behind and gazed his embarrass face. After sometime when Jaidev arrived, he recognized the masked man. He gave him a waver confusing me more. I was in dilemma. When inquired came to know that it was my classmate Sachin. At that moment, my face was completely shrunken as we were meeting after such a long time and I ignored him. By crossing all the folks I managed to get near him and made a handshake with a apology. From that moment onwards I decided that “if a masked man in a crowd gives me a waver, I’ll also give him a waver because he might be my neighbor.”

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