The sun had gone down and the street in my Chennai neighbourhood was dark. As I stepped out of a cybercafé holding my large laptop in one hand and a few papers in the other, a man's voice stopped me. "Sir..." It was a courteous voice that contained in it the hint of a question, like "Sir...?" My mind was full of whatever it is that had taken me to the internet tangle and I was neither expecting nor in a mood to welcome a sudden accosting from a stranger.
So I stopped with some impatience to look at the man who was now no more than one foot away. He was tall, slim, bearded, bespectacled, youngish. He looked at me intently and in total silence for a few moments as if he was trying to 'place' me. I assumed he was going to ask, "Are you... are you not...?" - a fairly common opening for someone who thinks he has seen you somewhere but not quite sure when and where and wants to re-establish identities.
"Yes?"
"Sir..." And, switching to Tamil, he said under his breath, " Rombapasi... (I am very hungry)," and then what can be translated as "Need just a couple of idlis..." The language, the manner of using it, were conversational, not supplicatory. He could have been speaking to me about the city's conservancy, the din being created by electioneering loudspeakers.
Waiting a few feet away, the driver of my car had started its engine and the little vehicle was purring. I moved away from the man saying just one word in English, "Sorry..." As I got in, I saw the man had not moved. His face remained turned towards me. And he sent me a look I will never forget. It held a collage of surprise, disappointment, reproach. All these refracted into something else: loathing. Here was a pedestrian, hungry, possibly famished, penniless. And here I was, twice his size, stuffing myself and my belongings into a car. My driver who had observed all this asked, "Sir, do you know the man?" "No, do you...?" "Oh no... I was just wondering... the way he was talking to you..." The driver was uneasy. I reassured him "He was asking for some money... That is all..." "Oh, that is alright then Sir..." As we drove off, the man was still standing there, looking at me, incinerating me by that wordless look.
The encounter had lasted no more than 30 seconds. But it has not left me.
Why did I rush away from him? I had some money in my wallet, rupees in a couple of convenient denominations, and a few coins, the chunky five-rupee one included. I was not in any particular hurry, nor was I preoccupied or distracted. I just did not want to be 'disturbed', did not want my 'own' time to be intruded upon, that is all.
Thinking upon the whole thing I realize that this is what I commonly do. If inside a car I turn away from the tap on the window screen at traffic signals. If out walking, I avoid crossing or pausing before a beggar. And this is not because I have a position on begging, disapproving of the asking for or the giving of alms, but simply because I do not want my thoughts, reverie or a blankness to be pierced by this man or woman. Opening a wallet, selecting a denomination that is not too paltry but not too much, keeping the bigger value currency from the beggar's line of vision, dropping the money into the outstretched palm, risking some kind of negative reaction or even thanklessness, all grow into an "Uff". And this coexists with the "Aah" at the contemplation of the celebrated Ajanta painting of a young Buddha begging for alms from Yashodhara and Rahula, or of the deeply affecting 1914 painting by Abanindranath Tagore of an old and emaciated Buddha as a mendicant (picture). The 18th-century painting by Jacques-Louis David of Belisarius, Justinian's general who fell from favour, was stripped of office and possessions, blinded and reduced to begging is an all-time stunner. The painting that hangs in the museum at Lille has Belisarius induct a child into his begging and a woman, the very image of compassion, responding. Ernst Barlach's "Blind Beggar" (1906), among that German sculptor's 'beggar figures' from Russia, is another masterpiece. All these have drawn and will always draw an "Aah" from beholders, all of who will, like me, dodge the beggar on the street.
Is appreciation of these works of art a romanticizing of begging? I do not believe it is, any more than Somnath Hore's woodcuts and drawings or Sunil Janah's photographs of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 were. Or Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's Pather Panchali and Satyajit Ray's great film of it. They were intended to be and remain great narratives of the human condition.
George Orwell's "Why Are Beggars Despised" is a classic. It has this unforgettable paragraph: "Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other... He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering." The Motihari-born excoriator of humbug concludes his essay with words that fit India like a turban: "In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised."
I will never know what the man I subconsciously despised for troubling me for money to buy a couple of idlis was thinking. Perhaps he had recognized me and now holds Mr So-and-So in irremediable contempt for being a slave of big money. Good for him. Or perhaps he was thinking that this man bundling himself into his car has never known hunger, never known and while he will not spare a fiver for two idlis, has no problem with beggings of other kinds. Such as the begging by Make in India investors for loan or tax waivers, the begging by corporates for subsidies and rate-freedoms at SEZs, and, of course, airline defaults.
Idli-begging is one thing, Mallya-pleading another. The bigger the begging, the better it works.
