Cosmic Dance of Poverty at the cross roads

Our roads, traffic lights and places of worship are always crowded is it because of our population boom, car boom or is it because compassion and poverty flows there? Let us explore….

It is a common sight in India to be approached by the impoverished community for a few pennies and at times for notes when you wait at the traffic light or when you take a stroll on the streets or as you walk out of the temple. While the billboards on our Indian roads attract the eyeballs but our poverty can be an eysore. Poverty takes form in all ages, and morsels vary in sizes, colors and shapes. May be Shiva inspired these folks to take to beggary since he did the same due to a curse wandering with a morsel.

At the Red light:
A clan swarms you from all sides when you are at the traffic light waiting the amber to turn green. They scratch your windows and some of them bang on them trying to convince you to shed a few coins from your leather wallet. Some of them emotionally pinch you by exhibiting their burnt face or a lost limb and while other ones melt your heart. Some mothers walk around the heavy traffic zone like outback Kangaroos and not only risking their lives but also risk the life of few months old baby. The gory sight of poverty is displayed on the innocent faces with unkempt hair, clad in dirty rags and bulging empty stomachs and protruding rib cages. The very scene makes you uncomfortable in your ribcage. Their only demand is small change to buy milk for the crying baby. I feel so pained when my fellow mate on the planet starves. A man convinced me that he was starving since morning and I shared my change but a few minutes later I found him smoking a cigarette from the change I gave. There is again a debate between sympathy and empathy.

Morsel Maheshwaras:
The scene changes once you step into your place of worship. While we make a trip to download our emotional burden at the place of worship there is crowd of handicapped older folks sitting in mobile chairs and bandaged lepers squatting outside for our arrival making noise with a few coins in their aluminum plates and cups. Should I show the same compassion that God showed on me when I walked into the temple? Why would God need my money and why don’t I drop the change in their plates rather than offering it to God. Should I worry about getting a place in heaven by sharing my change or can I come up with a plan to make this place a heaven? It is a fight between compassion and impudence.

Do you know that these guys have a union and run an association to cater to the needs and welfare of fellow beggars? They also don’t accept under certain denomination and coins under certain value. There is so much of self-esteem that goes into begging.

Not only do religious Gurus use spirituality as a means to amass wealth, but some followers do the same. They walk around carrying the pictures of their Gods and Goddesses and plead for change to make this dream trip to their place of faith. Since it deals with God and pilgrimage we often find it difficult to say No and eventually cave into our religious sentiments. We know we are taken for a ride, but still there is 1% faith that operates 99% of the times. There is a debate between being prudent and heeding to religious sentiments.

Sidewalk Hoodwinkers:
Another indigent clique gawks at your overflowing money bag, luxury cars and they follow you closer than your shadow trying to convince you that they are from another city and their wallets and belongings were robbed and they need money to go back home. These folks talk in multiple languages to reap change from tourist. I grew suspicious when I happen to meet 3 such cliques in a single day, until then I believed their story and offered my Gandhi notes to find their way back home. Emotional hoodwinkers will thrive until we learn to distinguish between the real and spurious one. Should I be emotional or logical?

Service at Lights:
Since we have raised voice against beggary at traffic lights there is a new breed who offers to wipe the windshield for a small change. There is nothing wrong in wiping the window for a small change, but traffic lights are not the place to wipe windows. Another bevy of mobile hawkers mob your car and ask you to share your pocket change buying one of their products (under 10 Rs.) like ear buds, balloons, plastic toys, cleaning cloth, which are neither quality products nor safe to use. is not beggary, but rather mobile vendoring for a small change. But some of them are so rude that they abuse you the moment you decline their service.

Poverty is ubiquitous and so are the scams. These are a few popular scams played on us to access free and easy money through exhibition of their poverty, physical disability, medical condition and religious beliefs. We feel emotionally fingered looking at landscapes of poverty. There is constantly a moral debate that goes in our minds, do I offload my change or should I not encourage beggary? Irrespective of our faiths it is the basic human quality to exhibit compassion and express benevolence. At the same time there is a display that says don’t encourage beggary. Will the change that I give end their poverty? Neither am I going to lose my wealth by donating a small change nor are they going to build a kingdom with this change. For some who believe “what goes around comes around” emptying their change is a mere scoring of karmic brownie points. Can I convince myself that these guys have not taken to thieving but they only ask for the piece of change that doesn’t mean much to you but means a lot to them. Should I be politically right or morally right? This is the dilemma I and many of you are facing while waiting at the light.

Advice for Agonizing Mamis

While my blog on Mylapore Mamis has evoked a lot of response, here are a set of questions that you can share with the Mamis which they can in turn pass it on to prospective brides and grooms. Hope this will be helpful.


Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying
Published: December 17, 2006
Relationship experts report that too many couples fail to ask each other critical questions before marrying. Here are a few key ones that couples should consider asking:

What questions do you think are important to ask before marriage?

1) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?
2) Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh?
3) Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?
4) Have we fully disclosed our health histories, both physical and mental?
5) Is my partner affectionate to the degree that I expect?
6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears?
7) Will there be a television in the bedroom?
8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints?
9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education?
10) Do we like and respect each other’s friends?
11) Do we value and respect each other’s parents, and is either of us concerned about whether the parents will interfere with the relationship?
12) What does my family do that annoys you?
13) Are there some things that you and I are NOT prepared to give up in the marriage?
14) If one of us were to be offered a career opportunity in a location far from the other’s family, are we prepared to move?
15) Do each of us feel fully confident in the other’s commitment to the marriage and believe that the bond can survive whatever challenges we may face?

Will Mylapore Mami’s RIP?

My single status seems to push everyone to the sideline and without any effort it gets me the limelight. Is this an accomplishment or am I the recipient of Param Vir Chakra? Be it a family gathering, a professional gathering or a relative visiting my home these folks are always read to assault and autopsy me with their questions. I don’t know their intent? Is it because they have a fabulous marriage and want me to discover the same or want to get me into that pool of mud and wallow like the other buffaloes?

Do I enjoy this limelight? Definitely not! Recently an uninvited long nose neighbor sprouted in my home and comfortably sat in the drawing room and questioned my single status. She made me look like a horrible son in front of my parents accusing me of not letting my parents dispense parental duties and ruining their peace of mind. Not only did she make my parents grief stricken but on the way out she reminded of my ticking biological clock and infact made a pass at my salt-and-pepper hair and beard. I subtly told her that I age with grace and don’t have to dye my hair twice a week. Guys can you hear my clock? Is it ticking louder and faster than the Big Ben? I would love to be a human bomb and blow up (not blow off) these females. It usually takes a couple of days like the cold virus to ward off the impressions left by this 5 feet and 75 kilo bad energy vixens. She is just one of the many vixens that run amok in the hypocritical Mylapore society.

She is one of the direct ones, but there are other nimble ones who make my parents feel emotionally paralyzed and push them to welter in self pity by reminding them about my single status and deteriorating Arvind Swamy looks. This Arvind Swami fixation with Mylapore Mami will never wane. Is it because they fantacize on him more their better halves? After sending feelers across to see if my parents ever had intentions of getting me married, they would throw the list of unmarried women and possibly entice my folks with their wealth, pedigree and family background. I feel like telling these walking cylinders that I am not in the flesh market and neither looking for a suitable pedigree mate, or KCI certified partner, which I did for my Labrador. To these Mami’s marriage is all about accepting dowry and making off springs.

The third variety is one who would walk into the house and move around as though they are my immediate family. They enjoy the cardamom tea that my mom makes and then slowly open the sluice and let their reeking verbal diarrhea flow. Some of them would directly ask me how long I will make my mother do household chores. I assure them that I earn and can afford to have 3 maids for my house and I don’t need to be married to have someone help my mother in the kitchen. With my terse and pungent reply they dismiss me from their clan as an irresponsible son and they would follow my mother to chew on her brain and happiness. They eulogize on my single status and paint this to be the worst ever possible tragedy in my parents’ life.

Some of the Mami’s play the emotional card when they figure none of their tricks work with me. They dramatize my bachelor hood to be their ticket to be hell and would want see me married before they breathe for the last time and shed a few crocodile tears to create a pensive mood. There was a time when I got upset and moved by such tears, but over the years I seem to have got immune to such tear parties. Now I never bothered to hear the cries and howls of these vixens and I dust them off my shoulder like the flakes of dandruff.

The last variety is the gluttonous breed of pot bellied Mamis who parade around the town asking when I would invite them for my wedding lunch/ reception dinner. I usually compare them to the female ticks that live of healthy home grown dogs. Some of them even get greedier and ask me when I would get them a Saree for my wedding. With a smile I tell them if free food was their secret behind their pot belly I can take them out for lunch/dinner anytime. Shamelessly they disappear from the living room like Russian submarines and surface in the kitchen to verbally taunt my parents. At the next moment they move on from my single status and start bitching about the newly married couples and other mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws stories in the neighborhood. They forget that they were thrown out of the house when they got their son married. I remind my mother about these Mami’s life and how they were thrown out of the house for their wagging their long sticky reptile tongues. Sometime I ruthlessly remind them of their bitter lives and their past, but still they seem to be committed to the mission of getting me married.

I’m not sure if my single status was result of good or bad karma in my previous birth, but for sure I have earned the wrath of Mylapore Mamis' in our previous birth, they keep coming back to haunt me. These Mamis’ furtively leave our home after creating a pandemonium with their rude and ruthless remarks. Volcanoes of emotion erupt soon after they leave and the house turns in a humid hell hole for the next few days.

Majority of the Mami world seems to suffer from this epidemic and marriage seems to the only ambrosia for everyone born in this earth. Be it a psychological problem or be it a personality problem they believe that marriage is an elixir. To enjoy and be with oneself for life means a curse beyond emancipation.

Well I have never bothered to ask them how well their marriage sucks and the history and frequency of their physical and verbal abuse in their relationship. Having not much education, emotionally and financially dependent on their men, these Mami’s have learned to enjoy their lifetime in prison.

The institution of marriage is yet another sparkling invention by mankind. I am sure all these Mami’s are disappointed by their men and it is society and the institution of marriage puts pressure on them to stay together. Institution of marriage is a merely a Gold Chain and a talisman in a few sovereigns. But today there is renaissance happening in this institution of marriage. I am waiting for the day when these Mamis’ would discover the multiple affairs in their Mama’s life and office flings their Sons had. I am also waiting for these Mylapore nincompoops to discover about same sex marriages and live-in relationships in their grandsons and grand daughters’ life.

Biologist argued that men by nature are like animals can seldom be in a monogamous relationship and women by nature look around for the best men to produce off springs. I don’t know if this theory still holds good today but with changing human needs and wants and a lot of these stereotypes will soon be broken in Mylapore. If these Mamis are around I am sure they will still inflict the cruelty of horoscope matching, Moola Nakshatram and Chevvai (Mars Dosha) dosha even for same sex marriages. These Popes of Myalpore (Mamis) will never change their views and shift paradigms. PS: Neither I proclaim to be a gay, an impotent or a womanizer to enjoy my single status and condemn the institution of marriage. I am just a man who lives by his free will and enjoys being single.

I am just sick and tired of answering people why I am single. My single hood seems to trouble them more their old age friends, viz. asthma and arthritis and I don’t know how and why I become an eyesore in Mami crowds. May be someday I will feel marred due to my single status and decide get married, but when I do it a lot of graves will open in the city and Mami skeletons would parade to the wedding hall to bless me and walk back to their graves to rest in peace.