Timeout

Stranded at the Lodhi Road lights, I tried averting her glance. Looked restively at the light that remained mulishly red. I was hoping she would change her mind. But here was a determined little Shylock bent upon extracting her pennies, pounds we-ren8217;t quite hers. In that Pavlovian instant, I rolled up my window and she pasted her face on the glass. I couldn8217;t hear her. I didn8217;t want to. Warnings from the wise rang loud and clear.quot;Don8217;t encourage them. They are here to make a quick buck.quot; quot;They are everywhere. Besides your rupee isn8217;t going to make any difference.quot;

These voices were so different, even specious, from what one had heard as a child. quot;Every penny counts,quot; folks would say. Then, as they are now, beggars were the everywhere folks. Lurking in dark corners. Mushroo-ming on crossings. Hobbling around cinemas. Stalking shadows in plazas. Holing up on bridges, and now under flyovers. True, a few rupees wouldn8217;t make them millionaires. But people still gave. Just gave. The business of give and take hadn8217;t still caught up with life. They felt privileged when a mendicant, fakir, sanyasi or bhikshuk came to their door. Why, bhiksham dehi were the first words of a young Hindu boy right after his upnayan sanskar. But that was then.

Her tiny fists thumping on the glass returned me to terra firma. Her grubby finger pointed towards a bell hanging by the rear-view mirror in my car. She was smiling now, showing off her teeth that couldbe a surefire advert for a wannabe toothpaste. The glass ceiling broke in that moment. Her name was Lakshmi. Bitter irony, this goddess!

quot;Aren8217;t you ashamed of begging?quot; The question came, as though, from an intellectual wasteland. But it had been asked before realisation dawned. She answered it with the contemptuous silence it deserved. I tossed her a coin. She pocketed it but refused to go. quot;Ghanti de de,quot; was all she said. The light had finally turned green, vehicles had begun to crawl.

Lakshmi stood there, refusing to let go. As if the bell was her raison d8217;etre. Silently entreating. No wails, no loud pleadings. No mouthing those faked blessings. The child8217;s simple wish for the bell proved more potent than all the wise warnings and profundities modern life had offered. I plucked the bell. And as Lakshmi reached out to scoop it out of my hands, it tinkled briefly in happiness. I moved on, as we all do, trying to recapture the last image of a happy child the bell tinkling in her laughter.

She hadtransported me to the galleries of childhood where poet Nirala8217;s ode to a beggar rang soft and sad. Do took kaleje ke karta, pachtata path par aata. quot;The beggar breaks his heart before he begins to beg.quot; I understood, then, the ignominy of begging.

That it wasn8217;t easy to stretch out a hand in anticipation of a few pennies. That it was like coming down to one8217;s marrowbones, as it were. That all of us needed to slam ourselves for creating beggars before reviling them for begging. And that looking the other way wasn8217;t going to obliterate their existence. That a rupee or a bell isn8217;t going to change Lakshmi8217;s lot drastically. An egalitarian society remains as much an utopia as it was in Hegel8217;s dream. But a kind word or a joyous glance is never too much to give.

That it is futile to imagine that one should give, but only to the deserving. That, like Kahlil Gibran says, quot;For surely he who is worthy to receive his days and nights is worthy of all else.quot;