At least that is what everyone seems to think around here. The day after returning from a week-long trip to Chennai we went to school and were surprised to hear that a picture of us at the Vyara train station was in the state newspaper. Why would they possibly put a picture of us in the paper? I clearly remember seeing the man take the pictures as I dazedly stepped off the train after 36 hours of traveling. During the train trip to Chennai I had actually yelled at a man for taking pictures of us, but after such a long trip I was too tired to care about this one man and his cell phone camera. What harm could a couple of pictures do?
A lot; especially if the pictures are included in an article about Swine Flu, a very hot topic here in India. In the article it said that we had been checked by train officials for Swine Flu after stepping off the train, which is completely untrue. It also went on to say that people should be cautious of foreigners as we tend to be the carriers of Swine Flu. It was so unbelievable that I just had to laugh. I hoped that few people had seen the picture and read the article. We didn’t get that lucky.
As we were driving home from school the next day our van passed a bus stop and someone yelled “Swine Flu!” at us. Kirsten and I just looked at each other and laughed, but it was hard to deny the fact that it actually made us feel bad. Then, while we were eating at a community dinner to celebrate Independence Day the server started muttering about Swine Flu to the other servers. Now I really felt bad. Did everyone think we were infected? Then again, as I went to class to teach my 9B students chatter about Swine Flu started. “Teacher! Your picture!” one of the students yelled. She ran out of the room and returned with the article. “Ah yes, that’s me” I said dryly. Great. Hopefully it will blow over soon.
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