Because I have not had to face a lot of poverty and disease in my life, I was apprehensive about beggars in India, and how I would react and deal with them. I am told that in Chennai beggars are not as prevalent as in the other big cities, but you still encounter them wherever people congregate, such as temples, churches and marketplaces.
You won't find any pictures on this post, because I don't feel right about photographing other people's hardships, but what you see sometimes is enough to break your heart.
The most annoying are those who don't have physical deformities. A typical scenario is the rail thin, poorly dressed women, holding a young baby in her arms, persistently tapping on the car windows at a stoplight at a busy intersection, gesturing that she needs to feed her baby. Harder to shake are children, sometimes sent by their mother, who have spotted a white face in the crowd. Unless you are very stern with them, and at times even then, they will follow you for blocks, hoping to get some money from the American. They assume all Americans are rich, and I suppose, relative to their situation, even most of the poorest of Americans are.
Harder to pass by are the lepers, who are missing all their fingers and their feet wrapped up in bandages, or the man dragging a wooden board through the crowded streets, on which a women with no legs is sitting. There are to many other equally wrenching encounters, like the pretty young teenage girl, soliciting money for her education with a pad and pencil, because she has no tongue.
For myself, giving something or not to these unfortunate people is not an easy question. It's hard not to feel compassion for them, but at the same time, you don't want to condone and perpetuate begging, and the sometimes terrible consequences, particularly when unscrupulous people may be willing to exploit these people for their own gain. But begging is a fact of life here, one of those things you are not going to change overnight, and just have to accept as part of the landscape. So the question still remains for me every time I pass a beggar, do I put a few Rupees into their hand, or drop it into the nearest charity collection box.
