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Have you seen me?



Not a chance.  I mean honestly the picture that these PSA cards show is not at all like the person that finally is discovered. In most cases they wander back home or are simply gone for a reason and not wanting to come back.  Foul play is also admittedly a portion of the missing folk but it is sheer optimism when someone says to look for a face that is grainy on bad quality paper and put out in third class mail.

In India there was a similar effort that was handled through the state owned television channel.  There was only one channel so you could be rudely interrupted on the state's choosing.  Between the evening prime time news and an action soap opera there was for example a local language announcement episode that read - Aapan Yanna Pahilat Kaa?  Translation - Have you seen any of these?

These happened to be a collection of beings that had ostensibly disappeared.  The interested families and local police were seeking the public's help in finding them.  When this outreach began on TV most families in the neighborhood had black and white TV sets at home.  Which encouraged the finders to present B&W photos of their loved ones.  And they were displayed along with a standard template read out by the TV anchor.  Mind you this anchor was like today's Bartiromo or any CNBC candy.  All designed to attract the largest viewership (did I say it was the only channel) and so as incongruous as it might look this lipstick painted lady took on a sombre look and went to read the following -  most descriptions also were largely similar -

Ganesh Mhatre - 5' 4" age 44,
Wheat complexion ('Gahu varniya' in local lingo - which always begged the question - why call that out?) in a sea of wheat mind you.  If there was another grain to compare I would have looked but c'mon - a grain of wheat in a sea of wheat?
Bandha (meaning build) medium (again most desi were not Olympians and as such possessed a medium bandha) - so not too descriptive

which really meant that if I randomly bumped into the 999,990 th person at the local railway station and happened to break bread with him or her and asked the question if their name happened to be that of the lord Ganesh and they answered in the affirmative... bingo - suddenly I had a possibility to do the impossible -maybe find the missing person.  Otherwise I was lost.

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