FICTION The conservative school, of which Paati was a part, believed that begging is never to be encouraged. This was a simple political message. The liberal school, which I thought I belonged to, felt you should assist the needy but that the truly needy were overshadowed by the opportunistic, and they had to be appropriately weeded out. Like most liberals, I had caveats. Conventional wisdom held that children who beg should never be given money, since they should be in school. Women who beg with children in their arms should never be encouraged, since they were using the child unethically. And adult male beggars, generally few and far between, should not be encouraged because they plan to blow it on booze. In other words, money is hard to come by, and now that I earned it, it wasn’t for me to waste on
car, she would look to the next and chart their path past the fenders and bumpers. She did it with a swiftness that made you wonder if her companion was an inflatable dummy or a man with perfect sight. I watched them at several cars. I wasn’t sure why I pulled down the window, but I did. Perhaps the man’s face was one of a peace that I needed to see closer. Perhaps I needed to know if he was really blind. Perhaps I had settled on a one-rupee donation for this traffic signal, and the least offensive customer for my generosity had appeared. The woman caught on to the opening window with characteristic haste. In a moment, they were over at the car, and she placed the man in front of me, with his hands at the window. I opened the window further and
“Summa, these fellows cut off their legs so that they can make money begging.” someone who could earn it too. That still left the old and the infirm, but within that category there were exceptions. Beggars with minor mutilations could easily get jobs, and therefore ought not to be encouraged. The blind frequently sold lottery tickets or combs on the street. The infirm when accompanied by someone who did the actual begging were almost certainly never to be helped since the able-bodied assistant would invariably keep the money and spend it on booze. The boy had moved on from my car. Other beggars at the traffic light will also realize then that this particular car is not worth the investment. But one couple a few cars away had not seen the boy take off. It was a blind man, probably in his thirties, accompanied by a woman who took him from car to car and placed him in front of each window and held out her hand with a little plate. He was well dressed for a beggar, in a shortsleeved shirt and brown trousers, clean-shaven with his hair neatly parted. His accomplice looked more like a beggar, scruffily dressed in a torn sari, her hair matted and covered in dirt. The two made an odd couple. The man, with a half smile, seemed happy to be along on the ride. He said nothing at all to any of the cars he was placed in front of, and neither did she. She held him by the right elbow, took him to the first car, put her hand out, waited a few seconds, then moved on to the next one. The woman had an urgent sense of purpose about her and spent no time on wasted expression. As she stood in front of one
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put the coin into the little plate in the woman’s hand and prepared to put my window back up. She had already turned her face to survey the rest of the traffic by the time the coin landed. But the man stood frozen, as though the transaction was incomplete. I saw her tugging at his elbow, first as she looked around the other cars at the signal, and then at his face. He stood with his hands now opened with palms facing the open window. She tugged him harder, but he stood planted, smiling wider now. The traffic started to get restless in anticipation of the green light His two hands stayed planted vertically, at the level of my face, as though in gracious blessing. I wondered if this was a moment of cinematic beauty, if his hands were held out in approval of my return to Madras, if the change I had wanted to undo around me was hidden in my first human contact. With an expression of absolute delight, he turned to her. “Wait here for a moment. How cool it is. Aaaah! Air-conditioned car!” I waited with my window open, looking straight at his sunglasses, convinced they hid nothing. I wonder what Paati would have said. Joyojeet Pal is assistant professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan. His research is primarily in technology and development, and he occasionally writes on Indian media—specially South Indian cinema in the past decade. He can be reached at joyojeet@ umich.edu.