June 20, 2022
The holistic preview of life is best seen among a cavalcade of people sniggering to accommodate the necessities of life. The paella of incessantmanoeuvre,intrepid jostling and scurrying to buy a preference from choice is an undercurrent to label it as a misdebonair.
Are they buying a luxury but paying for a necessity?
We choose the paradox because of the belief that if the baggage is full, the mind remains dormant of the complexities of life. We may not have choices in our intemperate lives but galloping our reigns to comb the market is survival strategy, imperceptibly invoking the mind to choose the choice that chaperone the child in you.
I am bemused and awestruck! I boorishly sneak-a-peek at the numerous straw huts so indigenously crafted, each displaying a need that could become a choice and finally a baggage to carry. The canopies are dressed to perfection ensconcing under them a pageantry of items distinguishable by their propensity to alter- the-ego of the buyer.
Invariably, my eye flutters to a small girl clad in the most inappropriate attire with hacklesof hair forming a half clad turban and despicable tresses of saliva painted on the face. She begs to buy the pens closely tightened in her fist.Plummeting in a staccato of a dead pan voice she offers 5 pens for Rs 20.
‘What a great deal’, I tap to myself. She ingratiates me with her hapless condition creating a rhythmic satire of the indissoluble distance betweenpoor/riches. “Make me have an ice cream from the vendor standing on the pavement if my pens are of no use to you” she pleads. Selling pens has tired her as a metamorphosis from being a beggar to a sales enthusiast has somewhat been a failure. Invigoratingly, she comes back to her usual dispensation of begging as it an easier job.
She has more beans to her stalk and is a vivid observer of my deracinated bling chappals and the perforated leather bag. “Why don’t you buy the blue blag hanging on the other side of the pillar. It suits your dress” she adds.
I feel bemused and a bit fallen apart of the conspicuous presence I share with a beggar, though with some choices.‘You can also help my infant brother who has not drunk a drop of milk since yesterday. God will bestow you with immense health and pleasures of life’. She exudes her choices with confidence, leaving behind the Paleolithic subservience on the rapier’s edge.She is a beggar with choices and presents smogsboard of options to choose from. They too want to experience satietyunblemished by the despotic hunger, and curse the anomaly of being repugnant and a damp squab.
I take the pens from her and hand her Rs 20 note.She does have a right to choose of what gives her happiness; an ice cream for herself or milk for her brother. But not by begging! She needs to be emboldened by giving her a choice to work hard and resist the pressure of striking the palm out to beg.
So, who is at fault?
Our impertinence towards their desolation, or a conspicuous failure to make them a part of the society? Unapologetically, we put them on radar and have no compunction in the incessant targeting of the Bete noire importunes.
The market still bustles with the crowd sputtering a feet, here and there,for luxuries they boast as necessities. And, sitting on the edge of the pavement is a mother embracing her infant to her breast. The pusillanimous milk feels defeated to come out and the drop of tear that cascades down from her eye is the only satiety to pull his mouth close to her.Today, the real purchase is a packet of milk with the money she exchanges for pens, judiciously used to dispel the hunger pangs of her brother.
Why to make begging a choice and savour “Beggars are not choosers”, when they too deem to comprehend that thrusting a hand in front of strangers is perfunctory to negotiate their set of choices?
They need an opportunity and we need an attitude!