Beggar stories, Diary notes VIII - Unique but painful experience

Our interactions to beggars are generally limited to giving alms. After giving alms hardly we care or remember the face of the beggar. Though they are human like us but we do not want to / hesitate to admit them a part of the society. For us, they are unfortunate unwanted creatures who intrude in our life, make their poor presence felt, knock our conscious / unconscious and ask for our help. Sometimes we help them, sometimes we rebuke them, sometimes we avoid them but hardly feel interested in their lives.

When I decided to do the field study on beggar , my sole motive was to gain a new experience , to explore the life of that part of humanity who are ignored , despised , uncared , unloved and considered as less than human . Nevertheless, the interactions with beggars were not easy one. Most of them were not eager to talk about themselves. Some of them were aggressive, hostile and difficult. Few of them wanted money / liquor for the response of the questionnaire.  Few of them did not want to be bothered by any enquiry or questions. I took it as a challenge to interact with and managed to communicate around forty-five beggars more than an hour to two hours.

Took photo of beggar after interaction

Every beggar has his / her own woes to tell and each story was unique. The common element of their stories was that nobody wanted to become beggar in their life including those who were born in beggar family. The circumstances in their life led them to do beggary. I observed that most of them would become emotional remembering their painful phase of life when they became beggar. In their opinion, from normal life to become beggar was most stressful and torturous phase of their life. Some of them told that they were so overpowered by their woes and pain in their life that they were not in their own sense when they started begging. Around fifty percent beggar revealed that they tried at least two times to quit begging and start new livelihood.  They tried to fight with circumstances and fate to live a dignified life. When they failed in their endeavor, they again came back to their old profession. Interestingly I interacted with nine beggars, who did not want to acknowledge themselves as beggar. However, they were completely dependent on alms only. During study, I interacted with three women, who confessed that they were sexually assaulted many times in the past. Sadly, none of them complained or filed F.I.R in police station and they were not keen to do so.



During interaction, one old beggar philosophically shared his views that when you start begging on road, you shed all shame and compromise your dignity, you do not remain the same person. You learn to live in gutter and accept every bad thing as part of life. According to him, death is only salvation from this life.

Another beggar recounted one incident that took place eight to ten years ago. He knew a beggar, who used to beg with him, was suffering from acute T.B. One winter evening he died by the roadside. He stayed with the dead body whole night. Morning, when municipality people came for cleaning the area, they informed about the death to police. Few policemen came to see the dead in afternoon and took the statement of the beggar. The whole procedure took one complete day and his body was taken for disposal / cremation following day. “I was with him his last thirty-six hours but when I will die who will be beside me or my corpse”- with teary eyes he asked to me.

Every interaction was the story of sufferings, ill fate, helplessness, and unpredictability of life. Some of them fought to overcome their financial, emotional and family problems but unfortunately, none of them succeeded in their efforts. They are still fighting with their woes everyday and continuing the life. Their stories remind us our glaring failure as a human race .Until we do not provide basic needs of beggars and help to bring them in normal life, we cannot claim ourselves to be the part of progressive and modern world.

~~~ Ramanuj Dubey