[Reader-list] THOUGHTS ON BEGGING

[mahmood farooqui]

Dear Vicharak,

Allow me to say this that our utmost confidence and familiarity about
begging and beggars springs, eventually, from our abysmal ignorance of
it.

I have been looking, for years, for a single book on beggars, a single
documentary, a single article...

Is there anyway of going beyond the duality of helpless
victims/terrorised gang members?

For starters, in begging, location is the first, the second and the
third most important criterion-so what are the hafta rates for the
Ashram crossing? WHo all charge that hafta?

Obviously, beggars at shrines, dargahs, mandirs etc are among the
elite category of beggars-so how does one arrive there? Who assures
one's space, what is the system of graft, bribe, cutback etc in these
places?

Who then are the gang operators? Where do these members go at night?
Do people travel to beg?

It won't do to counterpose begging to work for beggary is hard work
and does not come easy. It takes great dedication and committment to
run after cars, scooters, apathetic passengers of a bus etc. So what
drives those kids and those oldies-not starvation in many cases...

Begging is also performance art of a kind-when you see a prospective
donor hesitate what is the Rasa that you should strike-karuna,
veebhatsa SHould you frighten the bugger about his privilege status or
should you invoke his mercy? Obviously every beggar is beseeching the
donor/customer, so what peculiarity can you bring to it-you have to
switch on the performance when you approach the car/auto, then swtich
off and then switch on again for the next one. But what do you do when
the light is green?

After experimental Urdu afsana of the 60s kind I have never read about
beggars. It is quite astonishing, isn't it that the phenomenon, like
roadside shitting, is so pervasive in our society that, pace Naipaul,
we can be wholly oblivious to it.

Urban designers, cyber-mohallas, installation artists(of which beggars
are the primary founders), body specialists, anthropologists,
radicals, subalterns, thinkers, desis, videsis- where are the voices
on beggar's buggery?

On 29/01/06, Vichaarak t <vichaarak at gmail.com> wrote:
> 26/01/06
> Today in the morning I was returning from my office, when I stopped at
> a red light, I saw a beggar knocking at the window of my car asking
> for 'something'. At the same time she was trying to show a glimpse of
> her malnourished baby, may be to stir up my emotional nerves so that I
> may 'help' her. On the next red light I saw an old man doing the same.
> On these moments many thoughts pass through my mind. Will it be
> justified to pay in kind or cash? Why these people have chosen to beg?
> Who is responsible for their state? If a person is physically fit to
> work why is he or she is not doing any job or they don't get it? On
> what basis to differentiate who is fit to receive 'charity' and who is
> not? What is the responsibility of the state and society towards them
> ? By paying them are we not trying to make to continue in the same
> state or if we don't pay than will they be able to survive? Most of
> the ladies are carrying small babies, are these their own babies or
> available on rent? Are these women married then what there husbands
> are doing? Do they have a notion of a family as a unit. How they find
> a match for marriage? How their kinship network operates? Is paying to
> 'them' a charity on 'our' part?
>
> 29/01/06
> On the other day I received a letter from UNICEF saying that it will
> take just a stroke of pen to save a life. I wondered whether this is
> not another form of begging. If I can pay to UNICEF then why not to
> the road side beggar? Or is it that in this 'sector'' of begging there
> is a division of privileged and unprivileged or organized and
> unorganized.
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