A patient marched into my clinic without an appointment, confidently announcing that she had phoned me before coming. For a few uneasy seconds. I wondered whether dementia too had arrived in my brain without appointment. Then I checked the recent calls received by my smartphone and replied, ‘No call received from you. And my phone isn’t suffering from memory loss!’ A quick look at her phone solved the mystery- my name had been saved against a wrong number. The stranger who answered her had said, ‘You can come right now.’ I wondered if she had connected to a person who was running a clinic for befuddled strangers. Yes, technology plus human error is equal to confusion.
Departmental stores are fertile ground for mistaken identity. Nowadays, I inspect a person for a full minute before promoting him or her to a salesperson. Once, in my usual hurry, I asked a person who I thought was a salesperson, about the price of a garment. ‘You think I am employed here? I could buy the entire store,’ he replied, wearing the expression normally reserved for a jaani dushman. The mistaken identity had apparently acted like a pinprick for his balloon which was filled with ‘status’ gas. Personally, I admire salespeople- they earn an honest living and should get more respect than an affluent crook.
A year later, poetic justice arrived when someone asked me the price of a pair of trousers in a store. I replied, ‘Certainly. But firstly, could you tell me the price of that maroon shirt!’ Because my mother and my aunt are identical twins, the movie titled Mistaken Identity constantly played when I was a young child. Once I asked my mother, ‘When will my maasi take me to the market?’ ‘I am the maasi,’ she replied, making me cover my face which had turned crimson red.
Fortunately, both sisters were bright students. Otherwise, they could have defeated every stringent check in the examination system. Before signboards began guarding wedding entrances, walking into the wrong celebration wasn’t uncommon. One friend confessed that he had thoroughly enjoyed a feast at the wrong venue before proceeding to the correct wedding- and had eaten there too. His sense of direction had failed him, but his appetite had remained perfectly accurate. In the sixties and seventies, love letters (enclosed in envelopes) were sent by post with a prayer- they shouldn’t fall into wrong hands. A doctor friend, whose clinic is at his home, once told me an amusing story.
He was pottering about in the garden dressed in clothes that were comfortable enough for gardening but not quite appropriate for patients. A patient from a nearby village arrived early, inspected him, and asked, ‘Where is the doctor?’ My friend replied, ‘I’ll convey to him that you’re here. Please sit in the waiting room.’ Sometimes, a comedy of errors can turn into a tragedy of errors. People have been arrested, attacked, and even shot because someone identified the wrong person. Since long, I have switched to capital letters on my prescriptions to prevent patients from buying the wrong medicine. My handwriting is now readable- but that is the only adjective which can be assigned to it. So, before acting on a name, a face, or a phone contact, it is worth pausing for one final check. After all, all mix-ups aren’t funny!