A case of Nigerian con trick

The e-mail, I made out right away, was a con trick. What gave the game away was the sender’s name – Srihari Ramakrishna. It was an SOS for money, 1,750 pounds, to be sent to London, where my friend Srihari was supposedly stranded.

Srihari is a friend,  but we are not that close for him to e-mail me for money. Besides, the e-mail English was somewhat fractured;  not the language one associates with a newspaper editorial writer that the Srihari I know is.  As the e-mail read:

How are you today, I am in hurry writing this mail to you, I had traveled to London yesterday to visit a new Researchers’ Complex at Imperial College London…..all my money was stolen at the hotel where i lodged, I am so confused right now…didn’t bring my phone here and the hotel telephone line’s was burnt during the robbery incident…the police only asked me to write a statement…directed me to the embassy, but they are not responding to the matter effectively…

…can you send me 1,750 Pounds today so i can return home,  As soon as i get home i would refund it immediately…send it through western union outlet…to Srihari Ramakrishna, 53 FREEMASONS RD,  London E163NA…Please help me write out the reference number given to you by the western union official and the details you used in sending me the money,or help me scan the receipt and attached it for me…

Not the  construction  that Srihari would be proud of.  But then,  the e-mail message came as news to him. When I called him on his cell phone  Srihari said he was visiting Pune,  not London as the e-mail said. He suggested that if I had the cash and wanted to part with it, I could send it to him at his son-in-law’s address in Pune. Srihari said another friend from Mysore, Madhuri Tatachari, had also called him a short while ago, after geting a similar e-mail.

Apparently,  the message seeking 1,750 pounds had been bulk-mailed to all his e-mail contacts, after they had hacked into Srihari’s yahoo acccount. They call this the Nigerian con trick,  also known as the 419 fraud. Section 419 of the Nigerian penal code pertains to fraudulent schemes. One short of our 420 IPC.  The 419 scam  is said to be the third largest industry in Nigeria.

This kite didn’t fly

Politicians rely on an obliging media to fly their political kites. This past week,  the New Delhi sky over 10 Janpath was overcast with  kites. When the numbers in the Lok Sabha poll made it clear that the coalition this time was going to be Congress-driven, Deva Gowda’s JD(S) swiftly switched fronts to offer ‘unconditional’  support to the  Congress-led coalition, UPA. 

Coalition politics has a way of giving hopes to parties with zero-chance of capturing power to aspire for cabinet seats.  JD(S),  with a tally of three seats , was in the wrong alliance before poll .  The party  was hopeful (or was it wishful thought?) of a ministerial berth at centre,  according to a media report. The newspaper that reported this piece of poor-selling fiction said,  it is more or less certain that H D Kumaraswamy will get a berth in the Union cabinet. 

That newspaper reporters can at times be persuaded by politicians to publish  self-serving fib, in the name of ‘exclusive’ news, was evident from the media report that said Kumaraswamy, camping in New Delhi, was lobbying   ’to secure one of these portfolios,  namely Railways, Forest and Environment or surface Transport’.  This  appeared on May 18.

Three days later came this  headline,  in the same newspaper.  The Page One story read that Mr Kumaraswamy’s  ‘herculean efforts to get into the cabinet now appears a distant dream’.  And the question now was whether HDK would want to retain his Lok Sabha seat, at the expense of his seat in the Karnataka assembly.

Moral of the story:  The politically privileged can have it both ways.

Car crash on our way to airport

Viewing this image you would not hold out much hope for its passengers. I wouldn’t,  either, had I not survived the crash. This was the vehicle in which my wife and I were going to the Bangalore airport to catch an early morning Dubai-bound flight. It happened near Bididi, nearly two hours after we had left Mysore,  at the dead of night.  Our vehicle  brushed  against a bitumen laden truck,  taking a ‘U’turn on a high-speed highway.

We were at the rear-seat, asleep. I didn’t know what hit us, as I woke up to the crash; my wife had passed out on impact.  Stranded on a highway in pitch darkness, I felt futile and helpless. For a few agonised minutes I believed it was all over, as my wife wouldn’t respond to my frantic calls, and efforts to shake her awake.

It must have been minutes,  but seemed an eternity, before my wife  regained consciousness.  She was dazed, and kept asking what had happened, and why, and where we were heading , what for. Whatever I told her didn’t register, for she kept repeating the same questions, to a point when I lost patience. I found myself utterly at a loss as what to do next.

Our driver Mahadevan knew the drill. He informed his travel office in Mysore; called the police, and the ambulance service. Meanwhile a crowd gathered, even though it was past midnight.  Somewhat irritated at our becoming  a spectacle for curious passers-by, I gave vent to my frustration, asking the driver why he wouldn’t try to stop a passing vehicle to take my wife to hospital, instead of wasting time answering silly questions from inquisitive onookers.

I didn’t realise then that  Mahadevan, hurt and bleeding from his right ear, was doing his best, unmindful of his injury. I learnt later that he had a slashed ear. A few minutes later a policeman showed up on a bike,but there was no sign of ambulance.

Under stress I get clumsy at handling  things, even a cell phone. I managed to call co-brother Raghu in Mysore.  I had a credit card, but not much cash.  He called his co-brother Narsimhan in Bangalore, who was the first to turn up at the hospital at the crack of dawn. As it turned out, I didn’t need cash. The ambulance ride was free; and I used credit card at the hospital.  Incidentally, it came as a relief to learn that the Karnataka government has a free ambulance service in place on the Mysore-Bangalore highway. So dire was its need for me that I would have  readily paid a thousand rupees, if only I had the cash.

It was, I believe,  nearly half-hour ambulance ride to BGS Global hospital at Kengari. The approach road to an otherwise well-equipped hospital is bumpy, and bad for fracture cases. And the multi-speciality hospital,  located close to the highway receives mainly accident victims. I see repair of potholed  road to the hospital as a medical priority in critical care. 

Emergency service was prompt, and efficient. Dr Venkatesh who attended on my wife stitched up a nine-inch cut on her neck; had her right shoulder x-rayed for supected fracture; and kept up a conversation to calm our nerves.  At my request he agreed to take a call from my anxious daughter-in-law, a doctor in the US. I found Dr Venkatesh a multi-tasker with reassuring way with words in dealing with patients – the kind, I believe, would be an assset in any medical emergency room. I wonder why a hospital that has a well-functioning ER and claims to have world-class infrastructure, including helipad for air ambulance,  can’t fix its bumpy driveway.

On our way back to Mysore, after a day in hospital, I stopped by to see,  for the first time, our damaged vehicle. The scale of damage may spell death for others. But I associate life,  my reality of it,  with that mangled mess on wheels, if only because my wife and I are still alive to see it. The image of the wrecked Sumo  tells me that at times a split-second or sheer hair-breadth is all that is there  between life and a pointless death.

An envoy’s barber story

 Before he left India to take up his assignment as our envoy in Brazil Mr B S Prakash visited his mother in Shimoga.  As son of a locally prominent doctor Mr Prakash basks in reflected fame in his home town. His Shimoga visit made news in the local media. The newspaper report  prompted a visit by a frail elderly gent to his place.  He walked into ‘our small garden’, seeking to meet ‘the Doctor`s son, now a dodda sahebaru in Delhi. The visitor, Hanumantha, had been the family barber retained by Mr Prakash’s father. 

That Hanumantha had walked  miles  to look him up touched Mr Prakash. “We gave him some kodubale and Kobbari mithai which he had, but without coming inside the house”, said Mr Prakash , adding that Hanumantha had never stepped into their house.  His father used to have his hair cut in the garage outside.  Before taking leave  Hanumantha  reminded Mr Prakash  of his dharma – Yenadaru baksheesh kodabeku,neevu.  The barber claimed his tip as an entitlement.

I had Mr Prakash reminiscing about his Shimoga barber  when I  sent  him the link to a fascinating piece by Mr M P V Shenoi on his Mysore barber, who played clarinet.  Mohalla barbers in Shenoi’s younger days (1940s) doubled up as street musicians,  hired to play musical instruments at weddings and other festivities.  Every upper caste household had a family barber, handed down to it from generation to generation.  He was paid a pittance as monthly retainer; given some sweets and clothes on festivals.

Mr Shenoi’s account, appearing in Dadinani.com,  triggered this mail from Mr Prakash:

In my Shimoga school years, early sixties,  my father,  a prominent doctor, used to have barber Hanumanta come to our home to cut his hair. He was too busy, perhaps, too successful a doctor to go to his saloon. My job was to go running to Hanumanta`s saloon and call him home. Like the barber in Mr. Shenoy`s story,  he too had a musical vocation: he and his brother were nagaswaram players at weddings and often were not available for haircutting.  I too used to get my haircut at home till my middle school, but thereafter shifted to more fancy saloons in Shimoga.

 Two years ago, I was in Shimoga visiting my mother. The local one-page newspaper did a feature on me to the effect that `this man, son of Doctor so and so, who had joined the IAS/IFS and is now the Ambassador to ….etc is visiting the town“. I guess there is still some local interest in me in Shimoga. 

The next evening, a frail, bent, elderly gent came in to our small garden…In a feeble voice,  he introduced himself as Hanumanta. “Do you remember coming running to me when you were young?”  he asked. Of course I did, though it was a memory from forty years back…  He said that he had come walking from a village nearly six miles away, after he had seen the local paper.  At his age and in his condition it had taken him hours.  This memory will certainly last a life time.  And he was not even my barber, but the recipient of my father`s summons.

Tree slaughter, with official sanction

This  milestone on Sathy Road says Chamarajanagar is just 10 km away. From here we drove past scores of slaughtered trees all the way to the town. Amputated tree trunks on the roadside bore mute witness to an officially sanctioned havoc to green cover.           

 This stretch of the road close to Chamarajanagar town has apparantly been left untouched.  Or could it be because the timber contractor, working his way towards the town from the sixth milestone,  has yet to make it here ?   Whatever the reason it was refreshing to see a stretch  of road so well shaded by the lofty spread of decades old roadside trees.

If axe-men have their way,  this shaded  stretch may  become a memory before long.  

We took this picture from inside  a car so  as not to  ‘distract’  workers of  the  timber contractor, who may not be appreciative  of  our amateur  camera   work.  Elsewhere, logs  from a freshly slaughtered tree  await transport to saw mills and carpentry shops. 

You could do a 1000 words on this picture.  But who needs words when the chopped trunks can speak.  Road-widening is cited as an obvious explanation. What is often not so obvious is that a minor fortune some people  stand to make by lobbying  for widening roads that are  rich with old avenue trees.

Telltale remains of a chopped tree on the left of the big one suggest that road-widening may well be a pretext for converting decades old trees into high value timber.  In many cases trees that got axed could have been saved, with marginal realignment of the stretch to be widened. But then saving trees fetch no money.  And these are sturdy old trees,  on which there is a fortune to be made  by bringing them under the axe.

Cross-posted from FORT-Mysore