Hawkers and Beggars

I wanted to take a second out from the travelouge and talk about an issue we've seen more of this time than last: hawkers and beggars. Hawkers are the street people who come up to you offering you junk for sale. Today for example it was a mother and child selling small boxes of Q-Tips. They tend to be relentless and troublesome.

The only thing beggars are selling is a little feeling of charity. Or perhaps more honestly, they are selling the service of getting rid of themselves by going away. Maybe hawkers are selling that, too.

We see a lot of both, but it was worse in Chennai and Dehli than it ever was in Bangalore.

They tell you in the books that you should buy from hawkers and not give to beggars. The idea is that the hawkers are one step up from the beggars. Keeping them employed keeps them out of real dire circumstances. This logic makes sense, but when a leper with no legs rolls up to you it's hard not to feel that dropping a couple bucks would really help this guy out.

This is a girl in Dehli that was selling beads. No one wanted beads, but the kid was charming as heck. We rebuffed her but she hung around and when Val mentioned she needed an ATM the girl sprung into action, directing us to the nearest one. That one was out of order, as was the next one, but the kid was resourceful and found another and then another, finally locating a functioning one. The kid beamed with pride when madam finally got her money and exclaimed "Madam has gotten it!". Of course we bought beads from her afterwards, she was a joy.

But meanwhile, this woman was there at the same time, drunk and grunting at us. Her kid was inert and didn't look too healthy. She kept repeating the same incomprehensible syllables and making the food gesture. She clearly needed help but she didn't get any from us.

Is that bad?

Stopped at a stoplight late at night we saw a family under a bridge in Dehli with newborn. There must have been four kids there of varying ages living on a piece of cardboard. The mother saw the light change and shoo'd her eldest over to our car to pound on the window and beg for change. It was a terrible sight. But we didn't roll the window down.

I don't have a solution, even thinking about it makes me feel selfish and shallow. Mike says that you can't help them and that they need to help themselves; he says that if you give them money they just stay beggars. I'm a softer touch, but even I've gotten more defensive about it. There are reactions on several levels; you feel bad about their situation, angry that they are bothering you relentlessly, guilty that you have so much and they so little, frustrated that you can't do anything about it, unsure what they will do next.

I read in a book that the concept of karma helps out here. That the beggar's karma is to beg and you can't change that so you have to accept it. At the time, this seemed like a convenient way to justify not doing anything to help and blaming the situation on events in some unseen past life. But as I think about it after getting just a small taste of the situation, I warm to the idea some. The problem we have with beggars if we are really honest is that they make us feel uncomfortable. That's our problem. If you can really let go of the defensive frustration and not be angry at them for doing what their situation requires it would be easier to accept.

We're going back to the shopping district in Chennai tomorrow where we are sure to see beggars and hawkers. I am going to try to view them with calm and acceptance. We'll see how it goes.