At least that is what everyone seems to think around here. The day after returning from a week-long trip to Chennai we went to school and were surprised to hear that a picture of us at the Vyara train station was in the state newspaper. Why would they possibly put a picture of us in the paper? I clearly remember seeing the man take the pictures as I dazedly stepped off the train after 36 hours of traveling. During the train trip to Chennai I had actually yelled at a man for taking pictures of us, but after such a long trip home I was too tired to care about this one man and his cell phone camera. What harm could a couple of pictures do?
A lot. Especially if the pictures are included in an article about Swine Flu, a very hot topic here in India. In the article it said that we had been checked by train officials for Swine Flu after stepping off the train, which is completely untrue. It also went on to say that people should be cautious of foreigners as we tend to be the carriers of Swine Flu. It was so unbelievable that I just had to laugh. I hoped that few people had seen the picture and read the article. We didn’t get that lucky.
As we were driving home from school the next day our van passed a bus stop and someone yelled “Swine Flu!” at us. Kirsten and I just looked at each other and laughed, but it was hard to deny the fact that it actually made us feel bad. Then, while we were eating at a community dinner to celebrate Independence Day the server started muttering about Swine Flu to the other servers. Now I really felt bad. Did everyone think we were infected? Then again, as I went to class to teach my 9B students chatter about Swine Flu started. “Teacher! Your picture!” one of the students yelled. She ran out of the room and returned with the article. “Ah yes, that’s me” I said dryly.
Sometimes it still amazes me how fast word travels about us, even without the help of mass media. After a couple of weeks of our arrival Kirsten and I went in search of an acceptable source of protein amidst a largely vegetarian society, and obviously meat was out of the question. We saw a woman selling eggs among other small food items in front of her house. We happily ordered a dozen and imagined all the ways we could prepare our new found form of nutrition. What we didn’t know was that a man living in the house next door saw our egg purchase and thought it so interesting that he told his fiancé who lives in a village 30 km away. She in turn told people that the foreigners in Bajipura bought eggs, and ate them. Not a scandal to rival Bollywood, but apparently juicy gossip none the less.
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