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| Subir Roy: There are beggars and beggars | | It is painful to see people often shrink away from a leper?s outstretched stump of a hand |
| Subir Roy / New Delhi Jul 03, 2010, 00:08 IST |
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The young man with the thin white stick at the traffic light was obviously blind. He was not a destitute but needy. His very modest shirt and trousers bore testimony to that. As the traffic halted on the light turning red, he carefully got off the kerb, felt his way through to whatever was within reach — scooter, car or truck driver’s cabin — and sought whatever people had to offer.
He had that diffident and philosophical air of most blind people. They never appear to be sorry for themselves, are thankful for your help and always have a faraway look in their eyes which, you realise only when you get closer, are not really there. No sooner had he negotiated a bit of the stationary traffic than the light changed — the revving engines told him that — and he carefully, at high risk to himself, wended his way back to the pavement, to wait for the lights to change again.
He did well as beggars do. So did the old woman with half broken glasses whom I would give a coin mostly when she would be seeking motorists’ kindness in the evening at the traffic light near my house. Then one day she was there in broad daylight. I realised that she was nowhere near as old as her stoop indicated. Her destitute look in ragged clothes was rather carefully contrived. I was a bit put off and offered her nothing. Immediately after I was off from the traffic light, I was filled with regret. What if she was putting it on a little. It couldn’t be that she wasn’t needy or in her robust youth. Why sit in judgment over the honesty of a destitute, I asked myself, and got no proper answer.
As children we had neither doubt nor uncertainty when it came to beggars. My mother was invariably kind to them and it never bothered her that some of them could be a bit professional at the job. Children of our Punjabi tenants who were friends of mine were also never troubled by doubts. Like me, they had adopted the attitudes of their parents. Every time a beggar solicited one of them, he would say, Kaam karo. To that family with its solidly enterprising ethos, poverty was the product of laziness. They were kind in their own way and in their own time but not to beggars. I did what my mother would do but can’t remember being critical of my friends.
The issue of beggars was put in a proper theoretical framework, once I got to college, by my classmate Gautam. He had enormous concern for the poor and was ready to sacrifice his career for a world without them, adopting a staunch leftist ideology which didn’t exactly prepare you for a government or public sector job, which was all that was then readily available to a bright young person. One day he stopped me from obliging a beggar, saying, you are not really helping him, merely perpetuating a system that lets people be in such a state. Out of respect for the sincerity of his beliefs, I didn’t start an argument by saying, my not helping the fellow doesn’t further the cause of the revolution either. But I was not also sure that I was doing right by obliging someone who was in a bad way on an impulse, without working to change the system.
This ambivalence has never left me. It is heightened when I see on the streets lepers with bandaged stumps of limbs begging. As those who are perhaps the most unfortunate, they surely deserve our utmost sympathy. But I also know that virtually every city has a state-supported lepers’ colony where they can be looked after and properly treated. But they prefer to beg on the streets because it is far more lucrative. It is painful to see people often shrink away from a leper’s outstretched stump of a hand. Any educated person should know that leprosy is seldom contagious. Should you not give something to a leper, who has been punished enough by fate, simply because he is a little greedy? I wish I knew.
Over time I have decided that anybody who is old and poor needs help. So do poor children, but you revolt at the thought that a child can grow up knowing that you can get by after a fashion by begging. I should go an extra mile to get begging children off the street. Doing my bit by my preferred charity isn’t really enough. But sometimes a small news item takes you far away from the world of moral dilemmas and makes your day.
Khimjibhai Prajapati, a beggar in tatters and on crutches, hobbled into a school for the deaf in Mehsana in Gujarat the other day and donated clothes to 11 poor girls. He used to be a tea-stall owner in Rajkot but his business failed. From what he gets outside a local temple, he sends money home for his ailing wife and shares the rest with other poor. Whether rich or poor, we should try to help the needy, he says. A trustee of the school says he has never seen such philanthropy in 35 years.
subirkroy@gmail.com
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