Many indeed are human failings.
The most common is Greed:
Daily I read or hear stories of intelligent men and women paying advances of anything between twenty five thousand and a lakh of rupees and losing them to online fraudsters.
*************************************************************************************************
The other human failing is Gullibility.
Con men (women) come in two broad kinds: many conning one, and one conning many.
In my school I read the story of four smooth operators working in a gang cheating a well-read Brahmin of his fattened calf.
This Brahmin was tugging along the said calf to the Kali Temple to sacrifice it (and possibly get magical powers thereby).
The first thief appears passing him by casually and wonders aloud why such a well-read Brahminical Pundit is leading a dog on his leash...the same thing is said by the second after another 100 meters...and by the third....and by the fourth...
The Brahmin's confidence in himself vanishes by degrees and finally he leaves the calf on the road and jumps into the nearby pond to bathe and wash off his pollution.
Lifelong friendships between two intelligent persons, between siblings and blood relatives are similarly broken by a gang of a few men (or women) waiting for the opportune moment and saying again and again to the more gullible of the two what a fool he (or she) had been....leading a dog on his (or her) leash...Instances of this willing suspension of disbelief abound in mythology, history, literature and personal experience...
*******************************************************************************************************
The most famous example of a single unqualified but powerful personality conning an entire civilized nation is Hitler...
I witnessed one homeopath conning an elite campus and the surrounding township for over a couple of years......Dr C....
Over as short a period as a month Dr C arrived from nowhere with his family, rented a small off-campus place, and built up a terrific reputation for his wizardry and philanthropy...he never demanded money...he took whatever was inserted into a piggy bank by his table....and healed everything from stomach ache to cervical cancer...
I didn't believe the story till a famous case of his was corroborated by my MD Uncle Dr KKM when he was the Superintendent of the biggest hospital in Hyderabad. The lachrymal glands that lubricate eyes and produce tears (of joy and sorrow) of the wife of a VIP dried up and the suffering was prolonged and unbearable.
Dr KKM and his team tried but failed to cure her.
Then the case was brought to the notice of Dr C and he cured the complaint with just one dose of his medicine.
I trust this story because our body, mind, and consciousness are largely biochemical in nature and tiny doses of the right substance used or abused can produce miraculous effects.
In my school days there was a common plant brushing lightly with whose leaves on the arm used to be our way of teasing one another...the itching it induces can be frightful...
Also, the skin ailment I suffered from for four decades and which couldn't be cured by any ointment including Cortisones vanished without a trace for the past two decades with just a drop of Antibactrin whose main ingredient appears to be just the household mustard oil.
******************************************************************************************************
After two years of curing everything under the sun for almost ten percent of the population of the elite campus, Dr C vanished without a trace one night with his family...just vanished..
Slowly and slowly by bit by shameful bit, news spread in the campus that he owed tens of thousands of rupees to dozens of well-meaning professors...
Either hypnotism or mesmerism or just power of personality..a Rasputin Avatar....
*********************************************************************************************************
I conned two or three generations of students that I knew some Physics at the same campus before I was caught leg before in Hyderabad (now repeating it with English language)...
============================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment