Good morning friends
Last week, I was returning from my bank and thinking about the chores which were pending, when someone called out to me and said,” Auntie, didn’t you recognise me? “. Frankly speaking, I did not remember this person at all, but then I have always been bad at recognising faces or with connecting the face with the name. In my youth, this would cause a lot of problems and I had to grope around the conversation to put a name to the face ! Now that I am a senior citizen, however, I can blame it on my age and honestly declare that I had not recognised that person…. And that is what I did in this case. This person, probably in his forties, told me that he had done the painting work in my house some years ago. Maybe it was true, but still I could not really remember him. When he told me that he had done some work in the bathroom along with the painting, I was quite sure that he had mistaken me for someone else. Then he started telling me that he had recently lost his mother and he had just returned from his native place. And then he came to the point… he asked me for some money as he had not eaten ! It was then that I realised that I had been marked as the target for a new scam. This thought amused me and also alerted me to be on my toes. I walked away from him without saying another word, but I started thinking, “Did I look like a gullible elderly lady who can be easily conned ?” And that brought a smile to my face. Luckily, no damage was done and I decided to be more careful next time.
I have experienced quite a few conmen but so far I have not been conned by them, probably because of my high index of suspicion. I remember a man coming to my clinic in the early days of my practice purporting to be a doctor, telling me that his wife had died in Nanavati and he needed money so that her body could be released. It turned out that he was an alcoholic who tried this trick with quite a few doctors. People asking for money for travelling back home, strangers asking you to show Indian rupees on foreign airports and foreign lands, ladies asking for money for funeral…. We have heard and seen them all, but luckily, our index of suspicion has been pretty high, so the conmen could not fool us.
But many times these guys can be successful and cause a lot of psychological damage to the victim. I remember an old lady in her seventies, who handed over her jewellery to someone claiming to be a police officer and when she realised that she had been conned, she went into severe depression. Many years ago, a close relative was probably hypnotised and gave all the money in his wallet to a stranger. He was in shock for quite some time afterwards. So, it is good to spread the word about the types of frauds that conmen are trying out. But, just as we get smart, they get smarter and in the era of internet, they are getting more and more creative. ( At times, I admire their creativity… of course I can do that only when I’m not taken in by their drama! )
Practising awareness techniques can be very helpful in detecting if someone is trying to fool us.
I pray that all of us can be alert and protect ourselves from these creative conmen,
Love,
Anjali Bhatawdekar
