Short Essay: The Art of Beggary (UNEDITED)

Beggars and needy are two different people: a beggar might not be needy; a needy might never beg. However, it is certain that being needy is a condition and being a beggar a profession. Of course we all know the person who is a needy, but beggar is the one who must necessarily look needy, whether in reality he is needy or not. This make-believe needy gathers all the necessary tools to camouflage his/her true identity, of course if s/he has one. At times the same person can have multiple personalities, not in terms of psyche but appearance, to increase the effectiveness of his/her camouflage.

A beggar cannot succeed in his/her purpose unless s/he makes us believe that s/he is in dire “need”. Clothes torn up or worn out, pitiable expressions on a hunger-struck and a dirty face coupled with his/her sweet, good-will words, uttered in beseeching tone, doing wonders for us, from one signal to another, ranging from getting us married to giving us children to sending us to Ummrah, are all parts of the makeup s/he wears to meet the role s/he has chosen for the day.

Their success lies in touching that cord which is closet to our heart. I always give in when they pray for my daughter, or even praise her, to live long: they only do it when she is with me. Otherwise, they extend their well-wishes for me to get married or to have children! Each one of them, on each signal, is an expert at knowing and judging people and gives away that dua which is our latent desire so that we could succumb into losing some coins. (Do you know any who still accepts coins?) The other day a eunuch literally asked me to give her 500 rupees: what for I asked; because you come to the same signal daily, and I have never nagged you before, and this is my Eidi. They have their reasons.

A beggar seems very needy and convincing as if we are that last hope with which his/her life hangs; try to shun them, and they will spit right into your face, divulging into our worse fears. Once a young addict, not older than 12, actually abused my bloodline because I refused to give in to his sham.

Since begging is no more as profitable as it was once, many have learnt the new ways and slightly modified their ways. Now they coerce us to buy from them: a toy worth 20 in 50 because they are needy, and they are not begging, and we happened to be waiting at the signal. Interestingly, the things they sell in daytimes are more useful than the useless stuff they take out in the evenings: the small, artificial lanterns, who needs them anyway! Some decide to offer services like wiping the car with a wiper or a cloth: the boy with the cloth would not clean the car but stand there at the window, with the cloth in his hand, pretending to be useful but, in fact, begging for help because he, although looks needy, is working! These indolent sellers find convincing, controllable victims to meet their ends.

Women, thin-skinned and highly emotional, are their favorite feast. Even the guy with the wiper in his hand, who leaps at the wind shield forcing his unrequired labor, choses eight times a women if he is to wipe 10 cars. And, our luck betrays us more quickly if we are with a child: two birds in hand are easier to allure than the one. I do not like paying them off just because they happen to stand there, doing nothing, pretending to be helpful by thrusting useless things or meaningless services, but I hate it most when they stereotype women, thinking all of us are easy preys. They can stand there if they like till the red turns green or they can wipe off the wind shield if they like, only to curse me later for being sly.

A beggar’s manifestation of need is of two types: personal or family. If it is personal, s/he must look either sick, amputated or old. In later case, s/he should look like a family person: (in order of preference) a father, mother, daughter, wife or brother, needing help in everything from wedding off his daughters to feeding her children to buying her father medicine to getting her husband checked-up to helping his orphaned siblings. Those who beg for their families are usually healthy while the family member is too sick to let them work, and they bring the sick person on road so that the help can be extended right away!

A beggar can be a man, a woman, a man and a woman, a child, or a eunuch: at times the whole family raids the signal, targeting everyone, seemingly contesting each other. The child beggar only needs his/her face to entice the victim; the bigger the family in the car, the brighter his/her chances. The most beneficial thing for him/her to sell is toys, showing that s/he although in the exact age to fiddle with the balloon is cursed to give it away. The scene intensified with beguiling tone touches the heart (Thank God! Our child have us!), and we pay for the performance.

Male beggars, as per our expectations, are most of the times ugly, defective or/and abominable. The cripple asks money for himself while the elderly for his family. I have grown immune to the bewitching expressions of an old beggar who sits on the pavement, a little before the signal, with his stick holding together a bunch of colorful balloons which helps him in getting spotted from a distance while he stretches his legs in an elderly fashion. He is so skillful that, across the dazzling headlights, he would actually look right into our eyes, convincing us of his dire need. We succumb because we fear ending up like him.

The female beggars are not handsome either (for the prettier ones prefer standing on a poorly-lit pavement, waiting for the right man). However, they are agreeable (may be they make use of some readily available cosmetics). Forcing a dangling an infant to their haphazard breasts, dressed shabbily, smelling and sweating badly, they prefer to speak less and communicate more. We see her package crying or half-asleep, poorly fed, mostly undressed, and we presume that no tragedy can afflict a mother more bitterly than burning the suckling under scorching sun, and we pay her, fearing the merciful God who saved us and our children from the same fate. However, we forget that she could have left the baby with a dozen other children she left behind in the tent or the room where she lived. But, of course, it would not have served their purpose. (These slum Shudras of our society would never find the step that can up them in the social ladder).

The daughter with the blind father is a common specimen of a devoted daughter who never leaves her father alone while the woman with the convincing poster bidding a needy/sick family is a perfect manifestation of an illiterate yet respectable Muslim woman who refuses to speak to anyone (their entreating notes are made durable with flex printing on vinyl sheets or protected with laminations).

My personal favorite are the eunuchs: I pay them because they make me happy, be it with their false praise which sounds so real or with their natural appeal to social injustice. Of course none of us is human enough to let them be of any use; their need is genuine. Their mild flirt, their genuine respect for the privileges that normal people have, their candid understanding of situations (they can literally sniff if the air inside the car is tense) and their open-heart with which they let us go, without cursing, just with a false promise that they would be paid next time, are characteristics that are to be found in no other kind. They are the only beggars, who work really hard on their faces, whose need is beyond suspicion.

As per temperament, beggars can be respectable, shameless or disgusting. The former comes on the road with his family, veiled wife sitting in a corner with an infant in her lap, carefree children going hither and thither, while he with his stretched hand silently stands on the pavement with eyes lowered to the ground as if he cannot face us with the plight he is inflicted with. Their clothes are neither dirty nor torn. (Well, I always wonder, and someday I might ask him, where does he go to impregnate his wife and where does his wife do the laundry!)

At times, we meet a well-dressed, middle-class family whose car/bike is parked at a CNG or petrol pump, requesting us to get their tank full as their valuables were snatched on their way, and now they cannot go back to their home, which is obviously in another city. Sweat sweeps down our spine and we realize how the same misfortune can befall us, and we pay them for the fuel instead of paying the pump to get their tank full or to verify how long they have been standing there and for how many times they have got the same tank monetarily filled!

The one called shameless is a healthy, yet-to-grow-old beggar who should rather be a laborer than standing at a signal. His defect is his youth. He falls between the child and the old beggar, and should better work on his style of begging: some of this type grab a pair of crutches and pretend to be lame or dye their hair white and fake a hunch to look older. (This society is certainly biased because none asks the young begging woman to go and find work.)

The disgusting beggar has some incurable (as not curing his disease is more beneficial to him) disease which is spread all over his body or at least to his face. They enjoy playing with us, when we are least expecting them, by suddenly leaping at the car and making us jump off our seats. Some such cases have physical abnormalities, weird enough to scare the hell out of us, and we pay for we are afraid of God’s wrath.

There are also full-time, part-time and seasonal beggars. The respectable beggar is full-time as we find him at the same place day and night (for few weeks until he has squeezed enough from all of us); the aged man with piercing eyes and colorful balloons only shows up after afternoon; and a whole class of seasonal beggars comprised of elderly, widowed, orphaned and sickly emerge in the month of Ramzan, coming out of their well-supplied ghettos to make most of the blessings of the holy month.

In posh areas, we frequently encounter a unique type: the respectable, educated and naughty child who is armed with alarming fluency and convincing power just to make us buy goods from him. These children usually have a deceitful father and a hardworking, honest mother, working endlessly to educate the children who go to school in the morning and come to juice shops and restaurants to “earn” some money. Well, they make the most by the end of the day. Education can even add flavor into a despicable profession like begging.

Begging is an art, knowing when and how to hit the target. We know they are beggars; we do not like them or their profession yet we give in. Only by refusing to pay them against their verbal claims, we can discourage beggary. Only by seeing that their superfluous prayers would do us no good, we can outwit them. (Of course, these are not “those” beggars who cannot be sent away from a threshold!) As far as the eunuchs are concerned, they are neither non-Muslims nor contagious; they could be offered jobs, now when they have their own IDs for verification.