Swapan had almost 500 friends on Facebook. Most of them were from his school and college, but he befriended some on the social networking site too. He would receive friend requests from random men and women. Swapan would accept some based on his intuition. There was no fixed rule on this matter.

One day he received a friend request from a Chinese man named ‘Wang Chuk’. Swapan clicked on his name and viewed his profile. There were many pencil sketches uploaded by him, some depicted human beings, others were of beasts and nature.

Swapan would regularly post his amateurish paintings on a Facebook page named ‘Drawing Pencils Art’. It was possible that Wang Chuk was also a member of that group and had viewed his art. Swapan did not contemplate more before accepting his friend request.

Wang Chuk and Swapan started chatting regularly. One day Swapan asked Wang Chuk, ‘Why don’t you post anything on “Drawing Pencils Art”?’

‘I will definitely post. I am drawing a picture with colour pencils. I will post it tomorrow,’ Wang Chuk replied.

He did keep his promise and the next day posted an amazing picture. Swapan was captivated to see its beauty. The content was nothing great. It was a picture of some leaves that were trying to hide large guavas hanging from a branch. But it was so immaculate and intricate that it was hard to distinguish the picture from a photograph.

Within a few moments, comments started pouring in on Wang Chuk’s photo. They were extremely sarcastic. ‘Please learn to draw before posting a fake photo’; ‘It is a fake’; ‘You can’t befool me’ and so on.  

The next day, more hate comments poured in, but Wang Chuk did not reply to any of them. His indifference angered Swapan more.

He sent a private message to Wang Chuk. ‘Why are you silent in spite of these insulting comments? Don’t you have anything called self-respect? If they said these words to me, I would have proved my integrity by showing them the drawing copy which contained this picture.’

After a long time, Swapan got a reply from Wang Chuk. ‘Next time I will post my art step by step so that no one can question my honesty. But I won’t do anything about this picture. Let the things be the way they are.’

‘Why?’ Swapan was very curious.

‘Those sarcastic, hate comments are an honour to me. Some people think my creation to be a real photograph. I don’t want to hurt their misconception.’