Thanks to fake news, Shakira finds an Indian connection

In these times of social media and WhatsApp forwards, it's not always easy to separate the truth from the chaff. A Bhupen Hazarika cover was being passed off as Shakira's. What are we to do?

The millennials love Shakira. I don't. But, thanks to MTV, I have a fair idea of what she sounds (and looks!) like when she croons. Which is why I was most intrigued when, last week, my father forwarded me a WhatsApp audio clip, with a note: "Just received this from a dear friend!!! Please listen to Shakira singing Indian legend Bhupen Hazarika's Ganga behti ho kyun - she sings it in flawless Hindi. It's gone viral [rather strange it was, having to hear my father utter that word]. It's really sweet of her - and I had no idea she's so attuned to other cultures! #Respect."
I pressed 'play', and there was a female voice singing Ol' Man River, which Ganga behti ho kyun is derived from (the "original" is most famously remembered for Paul Robeson's version of it, sung sometime in the 1930s). It was vigorous and seemed to have a whole lot of adrenaline pumped into it but, alas, nothing like what Shakira sounds like when she does Hips Don't Lie. Soon, the song entered Hindi mode, and it morphed into Ganga behti ho kyun; the adrenaline went up a notch but Shakira was still missing.
"All very good," I wrote back to my dad, "but this is not Shakira."
"How can you be so dismissive?" he retorted (there was an accompanying red 'angry' emoticon).
"Because I know what Shakira sounds like,"
I said.
"Well, I'm going to go by what my friends are saying: this is Shakira and she's a wonderful person to be paying a tribute to Bhupen Hazarika in this way."
The next morning, he WhatsApped me a snatch of newspaper clipping that stated, 'Fake Shakira audio clip goes viral in India'.
I rest my case, I told him.
He didn't reply.
A few days later, The Times of India managed to get hold of the real singer of this viral audio - one Purabi Mukhopadhyay, who's based in Kolkata - and ran an interview with her. Turns out, she'd recorded this number in 1999. "It is strange that after so many years, this song surfaced on social media without giving me credit," she told ToI, and added, "I have been singing for 50 years now. This is the first time that I have come across such a hoax. Some four days back, I received this clip from a listener in Jaipur who was amazed to see that my voice has been passed off as that of Shakira."
I cannot help but wonder why someone, anyone, would go through the bother of such creative manipulation. What purpose can it possibly serve? Can I just hammer out "Breaking news: George Clooney to take selfies with 1,000 ladies on top of the Burj Khalifa. First come, first served" and send it out to everyone on my WhatsApp list, knowing they too will forward it to as many people as they can and therefore blitz off a multiplier effect? Someone helpfully pointed out: "I guess you can go to Burj Khalifa at appointed hour and see if anyone's fallen prey to the prank - and if some have, you can rub your hands in glee. If you're a sadist, that is."
Lately, I have been at the receiving end of an awful number of fakes. Every day, my father "forwards" me at least a dozen pieces of "news" (on WhatsApp) which are of dubious distinction. Unlike in the case of the Shakira clip - where I chose to stick my neck out and get into a virtual argument - I generally accept all his messages with a 'thumbs up', because he feels happy to gain validation (always sends a smiley in response to my thumbs ups).
The other day, for instance, he forwarded me something titled 'URGENT, DO NOT IGNORE'. It was a 200-word piece on how the secret to prevent Alzheimer's from setting in has been revealed (it was sent to my dad by someone whose "son is a doctor", so it obviously qualified as medical gospel, "else he, the doctor's dad, wouldn't have forwarded this to me"). According to the forward, that I read with great interest, all you have to do is sit comfortably on a chair (not a bed, not a stool, but a chair) in the morning (no afternoon/evening/night), stick out your tongue, and move it from left to right, and then right to left. Repeat 10 times. Daily. You'll never have Alzheimer's. Guaranteed. I wondered if Still Alice would still have won the Oscar if this nugget had been released earlier.
Late last year, when the Indian demonetisation forward landed in a 'Family Connect' group I'm part of, everyone in the group - my family and other animals - dismissed it as fake news. "It's too absurd to be true," my scientist cousin in Singapore set the baseline for exasperation. "How are people getting off spreading such tripe?" In exactly five minutes, the news was all over. It was not fake. 
Nice to know 'cry wolf' still applies in fake times.
Sushmita is Editor, Wknd. She has a penchant for analysing human foibles
sushmita@khaleejtimes.com