the black lullaby

Last evening a little past 8pm I received three text messages from three random people in my phonebook stating the following: Dakshini, a 9yr old with blood cancer is in critical condition and her father needs 20lk for an immediate operation. All the networks in Sri Lanka have come together for this cause and decided to donate 10 cents (I repeat 10 cents) for each person you forward this message to. Please forward to at least 10 people and save little Dakshini. You will be blessed.

Idiotic as I am and having a conscience to clear, I immediately forwarded the text to ten other people on my phone book. Ten minutes later when I sat down to think about it I started to wonder why little Dakshini was getting only 10 cents off each message I sent out, which cost at least 2 rupees and 30 cents. If you round that up into say 3 rupees, I’d sent out 30 rupees worth of text messages out of which little Dakshini gets only (wait for it) a grand total of ONE RUPEE!

I then called the network to ask them about the message and the man who answered the phone on the customer care hotline was kind enough to tell me that it was a scam. A discussion then began between me and some friends as to how some sick people would go to the extent of sending out messages like this just to fuck with our heads.

But then a bigger question arises. What would any old sicko get out of sending a chain message like this one? What does he benefit from it? Wait… he doesn’t benefit anything at all (apart from the sick satisfaction that half of Colombo and then some are trying to save a non-existent cancer patient). So who benefits? The networks of course. 

So what, did they all just have a monthly revenue meeting and decide that they weren’t making enough to pay overheads? Or is someone just trying to make their Christmas bonus? 

Either way, it is sick and unethical, but who cares right? Overall I’m happy that this little girl didn’t exist because if she did, I don’t know if her father would have still been able to pay for the operation with the generous 10 cents the networks were contributing.