BENGALURU: There are two things that others may take with a pinch of salt but I absolutely love – conspiracy theories and coincidences. I am one of those people who cry out “what are the odds” very often, just as someone I haven’t spoken to in years, calls or messages me shortly after a chance mention of them comes up in a conversation with a third person. Many among my friends and family have come to realise that I am hit by coincidences very often. They have also given up trying to understand my fascination with conspiracy theories.
The two, I think, are unrelated, of course (until a psychological theory explains it, or maybe it already does but is yet to interest me). Anyway, this weekend, I came across both, in separate instances. The coincidence was relatively smaller compared to some bizarre ones I have experienced in the past – a discussion on fake news with my son leading him to ask me about the hoax of the black monkey that had spread in Delhi years ago, which in turn led me to Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Delhi-6, followed by our startled glances at each other as the Sasural genda phool song from the same movie started playing on television.
Coming to conspiracy theories, after a casual talk about Ancient Aliens, a colleague recommended I watch Conspiracy, an old series on Netflix. The first episode – on whether Hitler did indeed die on the day he is supposed to – was nowhere close to the interesting stuff you find on the Internet about Netaji and gumnaam baba, or whether the moon landing actually happened, or if the 9/11 attack in the US or, closer home, the Pulwama or even the Godhra incidents were self-inflicted.
Anyway, call it a coincidence, but a routine telephone chat with an elderly aunt soon after woke me up to a conspiracy theory revolving around what some fear is the second wave of the Covid pandemic looming ahead in the country. “The numbers are being drummed up,” she said. “This is all a ploy to sell the vaccine, since the virus is dying a natural death here and there are no takers for the jab.”
Now, anti-vaxxers have been making noise about it for a long time, connecting most of the not-yet-fully-understood disorders like ADHD and autism to vaccine administration to babies. Add to it the fact that right from the beginning, the coronavirus outbreak has been surrounded by various conspiracy theories, like the disease being biowarfare or nothing but corporate medicine propaganda, and I wish I hadn’t read so many Robin Cook novels in the 1990s.
Clearly, this is one conspiracy theory I am not enjoying dwelling into. It’s one thing to wonder whether the Nazca Lines were made by extraterrestrial beings. It’s quite another when the issue concerns the health of your loved ones. So second wave or not, I am not letting my stock of sanitisers dry up. And as I wrap it up, the news comes in that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken his first dose of vaccine. And someone who is extremely wary of the side effects, and questions the available efficacy data vociferously, lost no time in saying to me, “The injection must have been filled with water.”