Identity Theft

Registering complaints is a long drawn out tedious process. I hit the bed after calling eleven numbers, talking to six un-cooperative customer care officers and sending 10 emails.

I’ve subscribed to four Youtube channels that talk about cyber security. ‘Data is the new oil’ says one of them. So, my personal details are oiling someone else’s fraudulent machinery…

Idly, I wonder what it would be like for that thief to pretend to be me to clean my bank accounts. What if he has to continue being me, and deal with all the hassles that I face?

I wake up in the morning to find that I can’t recall my name, identity or past. 

There are helpful people around who tell me who I am, what is expected of me, and what I need to do to keep things moving on tracks familiar to them. I restart life.

The person I see in the mirror is not me. How have I lived with this stranger for so long?

But who and where is that ME? Companions say this is what I’ve always been - a handful of clay moulded by authoritative figures, and that I’m on the fastest path to success.

A crystal ball gazer tells me about identity theft. I am not the person I’m given to believe that I am. 

Don’t you feel like a fraud living a life carved out of others’ expectations and information? You are playing a role, not living your life.

Then, who am I?

The journey of life is about making that discovery, she says.

I expect to hear mocking laughter from those who created me. But that is such an amorphous group with no identity of its own, like all those thieves and uncooperative officers. Is that what you vaguely refer to as ‘the system?’

I walk into the police station to declare that it was indeed me who did those transactions. I am the fraudster. I am the victim.

“A case of schizophrenia?” The officer stares at me through his thick glasses, “You ought to be sent to a psychiatrist, but right now, I’m just cancelling the complaint. Go find which is the real you, and who holds your lost assets?”