Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 18 June 2018 | Page 29

SANDIPAN CHATTERJEE
Chhodo Ulti Aadat
Aur Ulta Fridge
WITH
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as ‘warnings’ by the local police about
‘gangs’, giving a strong ring of legiti-
macy to the rumours.
Das offers an explanation for the
online rumour mill: “Individuals are
disconnected from society and their
interface with the world happens
through their computers and smart-
phones. It creates deep mental chasms.
The gratification is immense when
they inject into cyberspace something
sensational and it becomes a talking
point, with hundreds of people click-
ing and liking their post.”
Calcutta has been another epicentre
of fake news recently. Since it has to do
with the city’s meat, it has impacted
everyone—businesses, the administra-
tion and the common man. But before
the “dog meat” scare came the “plastic
egg” scare, almost as if to test the wat­
ers for the city’s rumour potential.
On a cool evening towards the end of
2017, news channels were streaming a
video of a Calcutta homemaker hold-
ing up a lit matchstick to an egg, which
was melting like wax onto a plate on
her dining table. She alleged that it was
CALCUTTA goes into panic
mode over the alleged sale of
carcass meat in the city ’s
meat shops and eateries
made of plastic. In the subsequent
weeks, the city’s poultry traders
reported drastic drops in the sale of
eggs. The scare lasted a few weeks and
ended only after the state administra-
tion declared that it was a rumour.
A few days later, another, purpose-
fully gross, video surfaced showing the
production process of fake eggs—a
drop of yellow food colour congealing
into a yolk before being stuck into a
thin, transparent, plastic egg-shell
shaped sheet. “How are we supposed
to distinguish between real and fake
while buying food anymore?” says a
homemaker, a mother of a ten-year-
old child in Calcutta. She hasn’t just
stopped giving her son eggs but is also
on the verge of banning meat from the
house following another massive scare
which has taken over Calcutta: about
the “bhagarer mangsho”, or mea­
t­
culled from the carcasses of dead,
wasteland animals.
Throughout April and May news
channels carried reports of how meat
from dead chickens, even cows, dogs
and pigs was being “processed” by
SHINY STEEL DO O R F INISH
B OT TOM M O UNT E D R E F RIGE RATO R
India, ab
SEEDHE KI
AADAT
DAAL LO!
2017
18 June 2018 OUTLOOK 29