No, I am not tuning into too much Amy MacDonald.
I was at the railway station yesterday, to see off my mother. I did not go alone. My father, hubby and a cousin were also there. As is usual with the trains here, the train was rightly late. So we were left waiting for the train to arrive for about 1 hour 15 minutes. Not long after we were there on the platform, that we had our first beggar for the evening. Even after a few rounds of saying No, he did not leave. After that we all fell into ignore mode to fend him off.
Several minutes on the second beggar made an appearance. I looked at the beggar. The child looked like a boy with the very short, awfully dirty hair. The child wore filthy white shirt and pants and had one hand raised seeking alms (for food I suppose, because he was strung up on taking the cup of sweetened milk that my cousin had in his hands). The other hand was perhaps left free for scratching the head or whatever else. But the child had a nose-ring, and that’s when I understood that the child was in fact a girl. This is the conversation that ensued (none of it with the beggar, who we were just ignoring)
I turned my face away for a few seconds. There were tears in my eyes, best left unobserved.
After that, I saw one more child-beggar – a young boy of about 12. But he moved around in the crowd, without stopping at any lot for begging. He was just moving around. That’s when I caught the distant look in his eyes and I knew that he was ‘high’….
So much for Reproductive Ability and so much for Aptitude!
^WiseGuy^
I was at the railway station yesterday, to see off my mother. I did not go alone. My father, hubby and a cousin were also there. As is usual with the trains here, the train was rightly late. So we were left waiting for the train to arrive for about 1 hour 15 minutes. Not long after we were there on the platform, that we had our first beggar for the evening. Even after a few rounds of saying No, he did not leave. After that we all fell into ignore mode to fend him off.
Several minutes on the second beggar made an appearance. I looked at the beggar. The child looked like a boy with the very short, awfully dirty hair. The child wore filthy white shirt and pants and had one hand raised seeking alms (for food I suppose, because he was strung up on taking the cup of sweetened milk that my cousin had in his hands). The other hand was perhaps left free for scratching the head or whatever else. But the child had a nose-ring, and that’s when I understood that the child was in fact a girl. This is the conversation that ensued (none of it with the beggar, who we were just ignoring)
Me: Why doesn’t she ask her mother for food? // I am not responsible for the child. Her dear parents who had the child must make sure that the child is well-fed and well-clothed among other things.
DH, facing my mother, but responding to me: Oh come on, now she will go on to ask stupid questions like why is this girl not going to school and so on? // Wife asks stupid questions. Does her egging on about education and parental duties have any effect whatsoever? If the child was to be in a school, would he or she be here on the platform begging?
Cousin, facing me: Oh, don’t you know? There is a whole gang of these people. They are trained to beg. // There is no need to feel any sympathy for these beggars. The money they collect may not really go into just buying food. They may be small but they are trained to be and look filthy to belt out the maximum.
Me, facing my mother: Her [beggar’s] parents did not need any IVF or ICSI? //Some people get away with so much disregard????
Mother: Silent, but for the empathy on her face.
I turned my face away for a few seconds. There were tears in my eyes, best left unobserved.
After that, I saw one more child-beggar – a young boy of about 12. But he moved around in the crowd, without stopping at any lot for begging. He was just moving around. That’s when I caught the distant look in his eyes and I knew that he was ‘high’….
So much for Reproductive Ability and so much for Aptitude!
^WiseGuy^
I can stomach poverty, even the child beggars, but it's the youngest ones that really get me. Before last year the youngest I'd seen were kids in Mexico who were 4 or 5 years old. Then last year in a country with a large Roma population there was one family of beggars (mom and two kids) with one who was 3 or 4 and one who was literally a toddler -- must have been less than two years old. The baby had only recently learned to walk, and already trained to keep one hand outstretched, palm upturned.
ReplyDeleteOf all the images that stay with me from that trip, waterfalls and ruins and museums and miracles of nature and bodies of water, sometimes the image of that family is the one that sticks in my mind.