The curious case of Jyoti Basu

Back after a nice weekend trip to Pondicherry. It was yet another impromptu trip which got finalized the same morning & what followed was the usual "dump clothes in car, google the directions, search for some hotel numbers & off you go". Drive was awesome but getting hotel room was awful, seemed as if the whole world had come to Pondicherry for new-year celebration. If this was the state of Pondicherry, wondering how crowded it would have been in Goa. But nevertheless, once we got the room the trip was cool. These unplanned trips have fun of their own :-). Both me & N just hogged on those yummy sea food, delicious French desserts and not to forget all the organic stuffs which you get on Auroville road. It was a good start to the year and hoping twenty-ten to be better year for all of us.
Well 2010 has definitely started with some interesting internet updates. Earlier it was all the fiasco on FPS vs 3 Idiots & now Mr. Jyoti Basu. At around 1:30 pm, I get to read a tweet which said "Jyoti Basu passed away". Shocked enough I started to browse through some news sites but none of them confirmed the news whereas on Twitter, people started flooding your timeline with RIP Jyoti Basu messages. Tweet pe tweet pe tweet and none of them based on any official confirmation; in fact some of them were quite ridiculous too. Have a look on the following snapshot.

We always speak of media irresponsibility and sensationalism but in this case aren't citizens responsible for this rumor? Yes, Mr. Basu is critical and is hospitalized too but the news of his death is not confirmed by any official sources yet. In fact as per the latest update from most of the official sources, he is still alive. But people are just going on & on with their ramblings for last 4 hours so much so that the keyword "Jyoti Basu" is already a trending topic on twitter & top search in Google today. Well, now I'm curiously waiting for any update from news sites to know if it is actually a rumor or twitter was the first platform to break this news...Till then the curious case of Mr. Basu continues…