My dilemma with beggars

Have you ever felt a small pang of guilt whenever you refuse alms (bheekh) to a beggar?

Well, I have.

And I would be surprised if I am alone.

Begging is an everyday story in India. And a very big question mark on India. Suppose we are sitting in a railway station, train, a bus stand, a place of worship or any other public place, and a handicapped and hapless (looking, at least) human being comes to us and asks for alms. What do we usually do?

We try to hide behind a magazine or novel, as if the most interesting chapter has begun only one second ago. If we are on phone, then not even a battalion of beggars can make us flinch. Some of us deliberately shift our gazes away from the beggar -- towards better sceneries. A few of us don't even bother to do anything at all and simply act indifferent. There are some who are brave or rude enough to simply shoo them off.

And then there are some who are a bit soft. They simply take out a coin or two and give it to them. Beggars love these kind of people. They can smell these people from miles.

I come in the third category. I never give a morsel or a penny. I always try to act indifferent. And even when the beggar is pitifully handicapped I pretend as never saw him/her. But all of this comes at a cost -- It makes me think that I am the cruelest human being ever born.

There was a time in my childhood when I was more than eager to give alms to a beggar. I used to feel real bad whenever my parents refused one of them. But this feeling changed once I starting growing up.

Once in my childhood I had seen a foreign lady say on TV that the problem with yielding to beggars is that it creates more of them. She was kind of a tourist in India. Beggars had given her a concrete reason to make fun of India.
"I never give a penny. Because the beggars then encircle you like bees.", she said.

Throughout my education I came across stories of beggars who had made huge bank balances and had created huge properties by begging. I opened my eyes to the dark world of beggar gangs and Mafia whose business was to make hapless people beg and collect their share from them. Every time I used to hear of such an instance, I would feel some sympathy vaporize from my heart. Was I becoming more inhuman?

Finally I changed. I had to. I was now a part of the fraternity of grown ups. People who know how to earn their bread. People who know how not to share their bread.

All these years of growing up and getting attuned to the hard realities of life had perhaps made me hard as well. Now I don't care who comes to me for alms. I simply refuse. I don't care.

And that is my dilemma. Because I do care. Because I can't even begin to express how does it feel to sleep without a morsel in stomach, to move in chilling nights without a cloth on the body and to die as an unknown.

Is there any solution?

Who knows. I am still waiting for the day when I'll lose my dilemma forever.