If you have ever stopped at a signal in chennai (or any other Indian city for that matter), then the chances are that you have also been annoyed/cheated/ridiculed by the swarm of beggers who conduct their business there. These ‘impoverished’ individuals rarely invoke any feelings of compassion but are quite good at inducing irrirtation. Before you brand me as a heart less person who feels no sympathy for the poor, let me tell you these people are not the poverty stricken individuals that form the bulk of our country’s population, but are just lazy good-for-nothing humans who would rather live as parasites off other human beings, than earn a living doing any form of work. They have very beautifully perfected the ‘art’ of begging, and are quite adept at using various methods to get you to part with your hard earned money, the best of it being intimidation to the point where you are ready to pay just so that they would go away.
One would imagine these beggars to be dishevelled dirty people but that is seldom the case, recently when I was waiting near adyar signal for a friend, this decent looking man walked up to me and asked me for 5 rupees. On the first glance he did not look like a beggar, and i mistook him for some parking attendant (which he was not) who was charging me for the parking space. Since I was just about to leave I asked him why? (give him money) and with a silly grin said “ishta patta tharalam” (you may give if you like), now this guy had some nerve, firstly he fixes the amount he wants from me secondly he says this as if he has rendered me some free service. So i said ”enaku suthama ishtam illa, poitu vanga” (i have no desire to give you money, please leave). And he stood around for some time hoping for a change of mind and then left. But I should give him credit for coming straight to the point and expressing his needs instead of going through the entire ordeal of evoking pity before making me part with my money.
A friend of mine who was new to chennai had just got off the local train, and met a group of people (supposed to be a family) who approached him saying that they were robbed and had no means to get home, so this magnanimous friend of mine parted with a 100 rupee note out of sympathy and left the station. A few days later he found the same group of people relating the same story to a different person at the station, and realized he had been cheated.
The biggest crime that these people commit is the usage of infants as a prop in begging. It truly makes ones blood boil, to see these innocent babies being put to such heartless treatment in the hot sun and rain! I’m very sure that these babies do not belong to the beggar women that use it, for any sane mother would rather put her child in an orphanage or give it up for adoption than put it through such horrible circumstances. So the fact is that these babies were either stolen from somewhere or some heartless parent decided to earn some money with his/her child, who was lying idle at home doing nothing anyways. I don’t understand why the police department or government officials do nothing about this breach of human rights! Of course the cops probably don’t have the time to look at such trivial matters, they are too busy collecting bribes and harassing motorists.
