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US blogger draws flak for saying Indians too poor to buy iPhone; deletes account later

 

‘MindBodyColleen’ visited Jaipur, recently and in a series of events she lost her ‘expensive’ iPhone X.

Instagram influencer Colleen Grady was criticized after she said “the poorest most overcrowded country” would return her lost phone which was an iPhone X. She also said that the Indians are too poor and does not have enough money to buy an iPhone. The travel blogger and yoga instructor shocked the social media with her comments.

Colleen Grady is a blogger and a yoga instructor from Indiana, she shared the story of how she lost her 5-month-old, $1000 dollar iPhone X in Jaipur. She said: “Yep, I lost it in the poorest most overcrowded country I have ever visited and one of the most scammy tourist cities in all of India,” she wrote, adding that she didn’t expect to get it back since the phone was “worth more money than some people in this country will have in their whole lifetime”. Anyone who finds it “probably would not even know what to do with it,”

Almost everyone who saw her explanation regarding how she lost her phone said that she was being racist and judgmental.

She also shared how her host helped her find her lost phone, she said:“We called the family and zipped around on their motorcycles to get back to my computer to try find my iPhone. Then I found out that it is irrelevant if your phone is on airplane mode. The owner of the guesthouse left some messages to my phone in Hindi in case anyone found it. And I just was still frozen in shock.”

Later that day, she received a phone call from an unknown person that told her he has found her phone. She said: “But then an hour and a half later someone called back from my phone. We raced again on a motorcycle through the chaos to meet some stranger in a dark alley to retrieve it. (All I was thinking was should I have brought my mace?) lol,” jokingly, she said.

The blogger said that it was miraculous when someone called her to inform that he has found her $1000 phone, she was also surprised by the fact that the person who returned her iPhone also owned the same phone.

She said: “Miraculously the person that found the phone also had an iPhone X. Now that is another miracle in itself because hardly anyone in this country has an iPhone period. They gave it back with no problems and didn’t want anything in return, just blessings.”

When she posted this on her Instagram account, she gained attention and hate in a really fast time, which led her to delete the account. But, someone took screenshots of her post and posted them online, later on, they became viral on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Active users in those social media platforms said that she was being ignorant and racist, they also threatened to boycott the brands that are currently working with the blogger.

With the continued attack, she even shut down her travel website. On the front page, however, stands just an apology which too didn’t leave anyone impressed.

Grady has issued an apology for the post. “I am sorry that my words did not give clarity to the intentions in sharing my story. I had no intentions to belittle the Indian culture. The moral of the story was the blessings and gratitude I had for the Indian people who helped me in a moment of panic when losing my phone in a foreign country. I apologize the most for the amount of pure hate that this has pulled out of so many people’s hearts and spread around the world.

“Ask yourself — If you found a smart phone device on the street locked, out of service, broken, no buttons, and the software is not in your native language: would it be easy for you to find the owner and return it? For me, the answer is no. I think most of us would agree the answer is no. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, class, education, etc.” she said in defence.