Beggar- bugger off!

Kerala is the most literate state in India.It also has the highest suicide rate. It has the most beautiful rainfall, it also has some very dry throats. It has a thousand mouths to shout slogans but a lot more hungry mouths to feed
Today Thiruvananthapuram decided that it has had enough of beggars and begging. Overnight, begging has been banned.
It'll be interesting to see how this gets implemented- knowing the Kerala police force, they'll be licking their lips at the possibility of polishing off some beggars.

It'll be even more interesting to see how citizens react to this, if they do that is.
All of us get embarassedwhen a beggar confronts us in public- our schools haven't taught us how to deal with poverty. Its always been shunned, been never talked about and ever so easily pooh- pooed.
Beggars remind us of what can be, don't they? They remind us of our existential reality that at the end of the day we all are comrades in alms!
Something tells me that this is just one of many more absurd measures that one will see in the days to come.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Begs the Question

Beggars are as much a part of Mumbai as the Gateway of India. Over the last 10 years of actively roaming around the city, the no of cars have increased and so have the no of beggars. What has also changed is the kind of beggars in the city. The first kind of beggar that I encountered was the simple woebegone face kinds who would sit by the roadside and keep uttering monosyllables the year round. There was no strategy of any kind in place, and the adage beggars can’t be choosers used to get played out. Most of them seemed fatalistic. As the economy evolved and liberalized, so did beggars. For one, I think even the beggar economy opened up. There were a lot many more beggars because there was a lot many more economic activity (and hence money to be handed out) and a lot many more people. The quality of begging also changed. Some beggars, in order to differentiate their pitch, started to exhibit their skills. So you had harmonium totting kids and adults causing disharmony in trains. Strat
Read more

Plane Truths II

Image
Continuing my series of what happens to me in relation to airplanes, I have a gem to share. The wrestle of the arm rest can be quite irritating especially when both adversaries want it equally badly. The war of course is lost right at the beginning if one of the adversaries has an arm that's armrest size! My Chennai to Mumbai flight was spent in half a seat, with me folded up around an imaginary vertical axis, actually measuring kilometers to Mumbai and counting down time. I thought I was lucky to get a window seat, my luck ended the moment the middle seat next to me and half of my seat got occupied by a gargantuan who was impersonating a human being. Arm rest was the first casualty, I gave it up in the first 5 secs; my midriff also was being molested constantly by the elbow of the beast. Am not slightly built either but I know how to mark my territory out and contain my body within. Land grabbing was being rendered a new meaning by my sizable neigbour and I felt a bit like Papua N
Read more

India's Got Talent

Image
In a strange turn of things, the President of the US, Barack Obama landed at an undisclosed location one day before schedule on Diwali Day and met with a host of undisclosed Indians in a show of solidarity. 1. Bal T: While Obama insisted on using a translator into Marathi, this meeting was short-lived because most expletives uttered by Bal T were beyond the comprehension of the interlocutor. It is reported that Bal T provided a one sentence suggestion to Barack O to get rid of the Taliban “Burn their taxis and beat them up and they will go back to where they came from” 2. Rakhi Sawant: In a special episode of Rakhi ka Insaaf called Raakhi ka Insaaf v/s Guantanamo Bay Rakhi taught the President and the CIA how to use verbal torture and killer looks to neutralize opponents. It is said that the President himself seemed absolutely awestruck by Ms Sawant’s candidness in laying it bare in more ways than one 3. Big Boss: In what could be called TV History, President Obama met the Big Boss in
Read more