To get from university to my house I have to take a minimum of 3 busses no matter what route I take. Each day I travel by bus, I lose about Rs.5 – Rs. 15 thanks to beggars. Statistically I meet a minimum of 1 beggar each day during my return journey. Since I go to university early in the morning, in crowded busses I don’t meet any on my way to campus. (this is the time I meet pick pocket guys, so I have constantly touch both my trouser pockets to make sure my purse and phone are still there.)
Beggars come in various shapes and sizes and but usually with the same old story. Some have incurable diseases, others have a big family to feed, and some have just lost their job, these are the common stories. Some have hideous and scary skin diseases that people would give him anything to make him get off. There are also the singers. They get on the bus with some instrument and drive us to the very edge of insanity by singing something which is so out of tune. (Now I know how Asterix a.k.a Suura Pappa and Obelix a.k.a Jim Pappa must’ve felt when Cacofonix a.k.a Kaako Pappa was singing) And beggars even threaten and insult people when they don’t give money. (And all people just let them do it).
Then there is the occasional English speaking beggar. He is usually a security officer or a clerk who lost his job at some government institution. (Well that is according to them.) Sri Lankans think that if somebody can speak English that person has a better social standing. It is this thinking that this beggar wants to exploit. They hope that English will help them to convince people of their story.
The interesting thing about most of these people are that they have the strength in their arms and legs to do something useful to the society other than living off our hard earned money. (Well I must admit that they also earn money through hard work, gosh getting in the right bus with the right amount of people and then yelling away is hard work.) But I guess they earn more through begging than they earn through some other job why else would they resort to begging.
Once a beggar with a very different story boarded the bus I was travelling. This was a young guy dressed in denims and this guy went on to elaborate how he didn’t complete his schooling properly as he got addicted to drugs, and how he was rehabilitated after getting caught to the police while stealing clothes. (At this point I was thinking ok now what is he coming to?) Then he asked the people for money saying it was their responsibility to give him money to stop him from going back on to drugs. (Man, what the hell?) I just couldn’t help laughing.
Until recently I was very careful when giving some change, and never ever gave money to kids because I’m of the opinion that if they go for easy cash they will never know the importance of education which is the only thing that can bring them out of this mess. But a question from a friend made me rethink about the whole thing. What if all these beggars resorted to stealing?
NOTE : While doing A/Ls one of my teacher’s said of a professor who actually lived for about an year like a beggar and then wrote a book about it. Those days I thought the man was nuts, totally jobless fellow. But here I am writing a blog post about them. (But these days I am having a vacation so I have to say that I am a bit jobless)
wow so you travel a lot by bus? :D
well, since I've been traveling by the 'campus bus' I haven't seen much of these lately...
255 is a dangerous one to travel by during rush hours. It stays packed at the Katubadda junction for 10 minutes until the next one arrives. During our stay inside the fully massaged bus, there is no need to hold the support railings above since you won't fall cos of the all round support u get from people. Therefore I put one hand in my phone pocket and the other over my back pocket (purse)!
I have met that interesting 'beggar' once..
he has that story to tell and once I was actually interested in what he was saying! Anyhow, whatever rubbish he told that day, he ultimately gave out a rather good message to the kids in da bus (there were plenty of them) against the use of drugs. That made me give him 20/-
Even I had the same question. They are so fit enough to do something physically, why take this route? It definitely makes the public transport a menace. On the other hand, whether we give or not depends on us. Once I read somewhere that it's not correct for us to judge whether the beggar is telling the truth or not (even though mostly it's quite obvious).
Finally, I'm totally against giving anything to junior beggars. If we find them, they are usually in groups either at signal lights where the vehicles stop and they come and vigorously knock at our shutters! or selling those perfumed sticks (whatever you call it) on pavements. It's obvious that they are 'employed'
There is a saying in Sinhala - ඇත්ත කියන්නයී, බිම ඉදගන්නයී බය වෙන්න එපා. and Russians have exactly similar saying too I found. The real meaning behind that is, don’t be scared to be a beggar or go to jail, (since that can happen to anyone, any time for any reason).
Anyway, beggars do provide a service – for us to feel superior and pass judgment on them or occasionally help them and feel good about ourselves. Some beggars are quite good at lowering themselves in most unbelievable way, and they make lot of money just by providing that service. But those services, now run by NGO, religious institutes and are like, in much organized manner with lot of profit involved.
Whats the harm in sparing some change? They wouldn't be doing what they do if they had a choice, would they?
It was late Prof. Nandasena Ratnapala , a well-known down to earth sociologist , who lived among the beggars in disguise and wrote a book about them. There is another book about our “sex-workers” (or hookers/ prostitutes what ever call them.) Pity, we don’t have people like him any more. The point is, rather than having a stereotype about these unfortunate social –rejects, we should have some tolerance toward them. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should continue to encourage them of feed them. I’m not a sociologist, so I don’t have a solution to offer; nevertheless I feel that some thin has to be done, as they are a byproduct of our own society.
LazyOwl
A cool post.
Well, I've read those two books "Begger in Sri Lanka" and "Sex workers in Sri Lanka".Actually it changed some of my views on them and widened the knowledge of them.
And I've met special begger too and when he get off from the bus with all the money which gonna 'avoid him from going back to heroin',I heard conductor said to driver that he had seen him many times and he uses those money to buy drugs.(Actually he added some other words too which I can't mention here)