“They have put something in the school food.”
The message reached a mother while her son was still in class. It showed a photograph of a child in hospital and claimed that the school cook had deliberately poisoned the midday meal. By the time she reached the school gate, other parents were already there.
Someone knew the cook’s name. Someone else knew which community she belonged to. Soon that was all anyone wanted to know about her.
She stood in the kitchen doorway, still wearing her apron. “The children ate what I cooked for my own daughter,” she said.
A father held up his phone. “Then explain this photograph.”
She looked at it. She had never seen the child before.
The headmistress tried to speak, but parents were shouting over her. Some demanded that the cook be dismissed. Others began calling relatives. One man filmed her face while asking why she looked frightened.
That evening, the photograph was traced to an illness reported years earlier in another country. No child at the school had been poisoned. The cook had done nothing wrong.
But her daughter had been waiting outside the gate. She had heard grown men call her mother a murderer.
This is how a fabricated theory acquires the appearance of truth. It begins with an assumption about the kind of person who might do something terrible. Then each detail is made to fit. The cook’s name becomes evidence. Her fear becomes evidence. Her words become a rehearsed excuse.
Nobody stops to ask whether the first claim is true.
Was any child at this school ill? Who took the photograph? When? Had anyone checked with a doctor or the school? Those questions could have been asked before the first parent left home.
Instead, the story grew with every telling. By evening, some people were saying several children had died. Each person had heard it from someone who had heard it from someone else. None had seen a sick child.
We like to think we would recognise a lie. Yet a lie that confirms our fears rarely arrives looking foolish. It arrives urgently, carrying a photograph and asking us to protect someone we love.
That is when we must be most careful. Find the fact on which the whole argument rests. Test it before you accept the story built around it. Above all, test it before you make another person answer for it. Because in our anger, we look for a scapegoat, that fits our assumptions of what a person who would poison food would look like. Most often, its wrong.
The building of hate by the present regime is to help us do just that!
The next morning, the cook returned to work. She had to pass the same parents at the gate. A few looked away. One mother came forward and said, “I’m sorry. I forwarded it.”
The cook nodded and went inside. At lunchtime, she served the children, including her own daughter.
The message had been deleted from many phones.
Her daughter still remembered every word!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
