First and above all, the woman was an extremely weak human being for taking her own life for hardly any cause .... and for not having thought about the grief and trauma her death would cause the teenage kids she has left behind. Second of all, why are none of the talking heads on TV making a point to tell their viewers that Saldanha had only taken the call without giving any info, and had connected the call to the nurse in charge of the duchess and that it was that second woman who was naive enough to fall for the hoax by not catching on that the woman on the line was impersonating the Queen? Saldanha was only the receptionist-nurse at that point in time.
Does the hospital in question have a regular receptionist or are the incoming calls taken by nurses on a shift basis? I don't know. Why would she care if the person calling was indeed HRM or not ... let the people who should know such things deal with it, someone above her lowly status. That someone is naturally the nurse looking after the duchess. Knowing how crazy the Brits are about hierarchy and ranks and titles and that sort of snobbish stuff, take it for granted that the nurse in charge of the duchess's well-being must have been several notches above Jacintha Saldanha, the immigrant with an accent originally from India.
Saldanha's duty at that precise moment in time is to connect the incoming calls ... not play phone detective. She is a receptionist connecting calls ... that's it !! Nothing more, nothing less.
The nurse who was actually hoaxed was not Jacintha Saldanha ... it was the other woman but nobody seems to be making that point. Why?
The way the spin masters on TV and the various online newspapers are spinning this non-story is to make it look like it was Saldanha who gave out the info about the duchess's condition. The real victim of the Australian DJs' hoax was the other nurse and she is hopefully the most resilient person in this entire sorry fiasco ... at least I hope she is resilient. I also hope the Duchess of Cambridge is coping with this added stress brought on by the media's attention to this story.
From TheGuardianUK:
One of three apparent suicide notes left by the nurse at the centre of the royal hoax phone call criticised staff at the King Edward VII hospital where she worked, the Guardian has learned.
Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found hanged in her apartment in the nurses' quarter of the hospital in Marylebone, central London, by a colleague and a security officer, an inquest into her death heard on Thursday. Three notes were found, two at the scene and one in the nurse's belongings.
She was found dead three days after two DJs rang the hospital from Australia posing as the Queen and Prince Charles in a prank call which Saldanha answered and put through to another nurse on the ward where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for morning sickness.
The dead woman's family has been given typed copies of the three handwritten notes by the police and has read the contents, the Guardian has been told.
One note deals with the hoax call by the DJs from 2Day FM, another details her requests for her funeral, and the third addresses her employers, the hospital, and contains criticism of staff there, the Guardian understands from two separate sources.......
OK, she was born and was raised in India and though she was Catholic, the prevasive culture of honour and shame permates through that society be it Muslim, Hindu or Christian. Thus she felt a horrid shame and the irony is that her Catholic upbringing which abhors suicide, was not enough to prevent her from taking drastic action. At first, I naturally stereotyped the situation having assumed she was Hindu and I actually thought it was a possibility her husband staged her demise. And that was before I read about the wounds on her wrists which I find suspicious but apparently the police don't. Maybe she inflicted them on herself, maybe she tried slashing her wrists. Anyway, I am just pondering without all the facts which has yet to come out. To get to my point, I pontificated on this because I felt it was rather unkind of you to dismiss her as an "extremely weak human". Some cultures don't view sucicide as a sign of weakness, I offer the Japanese as an example especially during WWII.
ReplyDeleteDear Canuckguy ... first of all, Hindus don't have first names like Jacintha. Secondly, her family name Saldanha is derived from the Portuguese who colonized part of India and married the pagans there and/or converted them. Oh ... and you are still stereotyping the culture(s) of India although at the same time you are trying not to make that assumption.
ReplyDeleteIMO, any person, whether Catholic or not, who decides to take their own life is someone who is taking the coward's way out of a tough situation ... whether it be because of shame, depression or whatever. As long as you have your life ... there's hope of seeing a better day. Also, IMO, this woman, over and besides being a person of very weak character was also a very selfish one. No thoughtful mother would have done what she did.
Also ... IMO, the Japanese are aliens from some crazy planet far, far, away.
You'll get no argument about the Japs from me.
DeleteWell, aren't you the a name expert; I did not know those detailed facts though I did know about the Portuguese(Goa) presence. Her's is just a weird name to me and she was born in India, enough said.
As for stereotyping, I don't view it as a bad thing, to me, it is just an averaging of any particular society's quirks which hold true for the majority. You know, like black men sure as hell can run. White men can't jump. Quebecers and Chinese are bad drivers. Scots are frugal. Muslims lack a sense of humour. Women like to shop.
Anyway, suicides are those who can't handle the hurt they are feeling, ok, so they are not strong and by definition, suicide is considered a selfish act due to their lack of regard to hurt felt by their love ones. But I still have sympathy for that poor woman. I am sure that in the next couple of weeks we will find out more that will throw light on this case unless, of course, the media completely switches it's attention to those horrific school killings.
Agree with almost everything you said.
ReplyDeleteI do feel sympathy for the woman but at the same time I feel she should have been stronger to withstand whatever it was that was thrown at her and I am sure there was plenty. I suspect that the hospital (although they are denying it) must have reprimand her very severely and made her feel that she was largely responsible. Sad situation all round.