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.
your post was good.i too have come across few such impostors during my stay in chennai.i met this guy, an old skinny man with a not-too- bad english accent, asking money to go back to his native gummidipoondi.my friend asked him how much he wants and gave away ten bucks.the very next month i met him in a street in icehouse giving the same reason he sited previously. i told him"better u must start remembering faces!!" he was embarassed but tried his level best to keep his face passive, in which he misertably failed. i bought him a tea afterwards and asked him why he does this.he said he was a chem graduate from a univarsity in hyderabad and worked in firm in chennai. but he lost his job and he incurred a lot of debts. this prompted him to do this'ingenious job' as he didnt have the physical strength to do wage earning jobs.he then exhibitted his skill in english grammar and mental abilities.he was pretty good at it. he said he is working on some book in mental abilities which a publisher was ready to publish. i gave him a fifty rupees and left the place with the elation of having done a good deed.when i told m mother abouyt it she told me he would now be praying to come across people like me. when i walk through those areas now also i search for him, but naver want to meet him again.
ReplyDeleteWe all do things out of compassion and when we sit down and talk to them we will get the real story. How many people like you who give money would try to strike a conversation and understand the reasons and emotions behind his suffering? Only a few and that too very rarely. It is not Sin to help a fellow human on the earth, but it is a sin to encourage this cult of beggary.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I find a beggar who is able and capable to work and when confronted he says you give me a job and I am ready to work. Sometimes I feel it is better to share a buck with them rather than getting a mouthful and earful from them.
Chandra, I too have witnessed and been a victim to the variety of desolate and adept beggers, those whom you describe so well that it was as though I was traversing through their labyrinths.
ReplyDeleteThis afternoon me and a couple of friends from Brockwood were talking about beggingfrom a different context. James, my friend, was asking us, how it would be if we quit every little and damn thing we posess and start our life afresh from scratch? Would we be afraid and resort to begging after a short while or would we use our intelligence to grow vegetables, hunt for animals, say in a jungle, using our intelligence. If we are capable of doing so, we can shout to the entire world that we don't need a shit from the people in this world if we can mend our needs ourselves.
Good blog man
ReplyDeletePostions change time changes nothing nor any status is permanent so the best is to let the change happen and watch it.Expecting the Unexpected is the best way .
God has given us all the abilities to find a job.The initial capital is already there with us.So many of them say they dont have incentive nor oppurtunity to grow.
The truth is "Luck is when preperation meets oppurtunity"
"Destiny is when a clear mind which is courageous and does not want to give up sets a path and follows it".
I am BILIGIRI RANGA, from Hyderabad, India and am writing an article for a Hyderabad based PRISM , a 10 year old mag, on begging menace in Hyderabad.
ReplyDeleteU can see my earlier articles in www.primetimeprism.com - Features link for earlier articles of mine)
o SAW YOUR BLOG AND READ YOUR VIEWS ON begging.
My article deals with this problem and how it is a nuisance to all of us
I am keen to have your views for the same and hope u would respond
Pls respond soon to brnugget_6@yahoo.com