My mother served me porridge with salt for breakfast today, which I find very repulsive.
Anticipating something good to eat on the Independence Day, I lost my sanity to anger and frustration. I threw the bowl saying, “how do you expect me to eat this, am I a beggar?” suddenly a thought jolted me like a 400 watt current. “I am blessed, for I am not a beggar. God loves everyone, but when he hates someone he’s terribly harsh on him.”
Being a human it’s a curse to beg, putting down his honor, pride and self esteem. We see beggars everywhere, yet their issue remains ignored, unattended and forgotten. For someone who can fund his basics, the nauseating beggars remain a part of the Life’s package they’ve been gifted with. No one gives them a second thought after offering them a rupee. ‘Omnipresent yet unseen’, is a perfect title for those thousands and lakhs of beggars raised by the benevolent Indians right from the streets of Benares to Cannaught Place in Delhi.
Countless questions set bells ringing in my mind and their answers I shall forever hunt for. Do beggars have dreams? Do they even know how big the world is? Do they ever realize that soon they will die having done no contribution to the society, but spent life as an affliction? Do they have any virtues like self-respect, pride, patriotism, love, which the contented boast off? I was curious to know the way a beggar lives; where does he sleep, eat, empty his bowels at?
Do these scavengers who are still uncivilized, despite the development taken place in the past 58 years have any fundamental right; a right to vote or to express themselves. While trudging the ladder of technology and economy have we the Indians forgotten the beggars who also seem to constitute a part of the population? I silently ate the porridge counting the number of questions which had come to my mind.
1 comment:
While it's nice to see you thinking about these issues, I hate the patronizing fashion in which most people speak about these things.
"Honor, pride, self esteem"?? Almost every one of us have sold these down the river in our respective professions; maybe the difference for the beggar is that maybe he can't indulge in complex moral casuistry to justify it like we can....
"Do they ever realize that soon they will die having done no contribution to the society, but spent life as an affliction?".... I don't know about you, but I have contributed nothing to society. The beggar's non-contribution to society itself is questionable, it can be argued by his very existence he helps us improve our karma (or at least live satisfied lives believing that we've improved our karma, if you ask me it's the same thing)
"Do these scavengers who are still uncivilized" .... what gives you the right to call anyone uncivilized.... in any case I believe beggars can only exist in a civilized society (makes you wonder what's the big deal about civilization anyway doesn't it)..... in the animal kindom, there are no beggars, it's every man for himself.
And yes, I do believe that somewhere along the line we lost sympathy for those less fortunate than us, it's a state of affairs where we've begun to resent poor people, seeing them not as the symptom of a problem but the problem itself..... believing that poverty is 100% the fault of the poor people, "I live in the same country that they do, if I'm doing so well and they aren't, it's their fault, why do I care?? " In our quest to live nice comfortable lives we demolish their slums, dump them outside the city limits, so that there is no "visual pollution"
in our cities; we don't have to worry about them as long as we never see them.....
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