These days walking back home in the evening has become a hazard. Nope, I am not referring to the unruly vehicles that seem to ply on the roads with the sole aim of bumping off as many pedestrians as they can so as to do their bit in controlling India’s population. Let me tell you what happened yesterday.
I was hurrying along the footpath when I noticed a family of 3 standing in front of a shop – a man, his wife and a kid sleeping with his head on the wife’s shoulders. At first, I thought that they have just walked out the shop or perhaps are waiting for someone until the man called out to the guy walking in front of me. Then the realization dawned upon me. I have met their kind before. They will accost you in the street and tell you a sad story of how they have landed in the city from some village, have run out of the money and now need some either to feed the kid or to return back home. My mom, on being accosted by one such lady with a sad story, had offered to pay her in exchange for some household work. Needless to say, the lady had promptly walked off.
In the past I have stopped and listened to them just to figure out if theirs is a genuine case. But it is hard to judge and I, for one, am not willing to part with my money just to give them a benefit of doubt. Moreover, I don’t even feel like spending two minutes to stop and listen to them. This might sound callous but I guess it is needed because the sad truth is that begging has become a profession in this country.
So I walked on, shaking my head as the man called out to me.
A few meters down the lane, I saw a group of 2-3 girls waiting to pounce on unsuspecting pedestrians. They had leaflets of some kind with them. A new shop has opened up close by – a sort of diagnostic center or something like that. During first half of December I was called out 2-3 times by one of their representatives asking me if I had two minutes to spare. I am not sure why they chose evening time to do this because that’s the time when all that most of those returning from their offices can think of is reaching home. Then a college-going girl standing right outside the center had told me that they have free medical checkup over the weekend. I politely said that I was not interested. ‘But it is free’ she said with a note of astonishment as if it was a gift from the heavens. I fought off the urge to tell her that there are no free lunches (or health checkups for that matter!) in this world. And finally, sometime in the last week of December, a lady had forced her business card in my hands and asked me to attend the checkup. For the next few days, I had walked past the center half expecting two bouncers to physically lift the pedestrians and carry them inside – for a free medical checkup!
The girls I saw yesterday seemed to belong to this center. But since I had spotted them from a distance I walked off the footpath, walked along the road and then got on to the footpath when I had safely cleared their area. The point is that I could do so yesterday because I had seen them already. If I fail to do that today, I am destined to walk right in the trap.
Oh well, if nothing else they would teach me to be more ‘mindful’ of my surroundings :)
I was hurrying along the footpath when I noticed a family of 3 standing in front of a shop – a man, his wife and a kid sleeping with his head on the wife’s shoulders. At first, I thought that they have just walked out the shop or perhaps are waiting for someone until the man called out to the guy walking in front of me. Then the realization dawned upon me. I have met their kind before. They will accost you in the street and tell you a sad story of how they have landed in the city from some village, have run out of the money and now need some either to feed the kid or to return back home. My mom, on being accosted by one such lady with a sad story, had offered to pay her in exchange for some household work. Needless to say, the lady had promptly walked off.
In the past I have stopped and listened to them just to figure out if theirs is a genuine case. But it is hard to judge and I, for one, am not willing to part with my money just to give them a benefit of doubt. Moreover, I don’t even feel like spending two minutes to stop and listen to them. This might sound callous but I guess it is needed because the sad truth is that begging has become a profession in this country.
So I walked on, shaking my head as the man called out to me.
A few meters down the lane, I saw a group of 2-3 girls waiting to pounce on unsuspecting pedestrians. They had leaflets of some kind with them. A new shop has opened up close by – a sort of diagnostic center or something like that. During first half of December I was called out 2-3 times by one of their representatives asking me if I had two minutes to spare. I am not sure why they chose evening time to do this because that’s the time when all that most of those returning from their offices can think of is reaching home. Then a college-going girl standing right outside the center had told me that they have free medical checkup over the weekend. I politely said that I was not interested. ‘But it is free’ she said with a note of astonishment as if it was a gift from the heavens. I fought off the urge to tell her that there are no free lunches (or health checkups for that matter!) in this world. And finally, sometime in the last week of December, a lady had forced her business card in my hands and asked me to attend the checkup. For the next few days, I had walked past the center half expecting two bouncers to physically lift the pedestrians and carry them inside – for a free medical checkup!
The girls I saw yesterday seemed to belong to this center. But since I had spotted them from a distance I walked off the footpath, walked along the road and then got on to the footpath when I had safely cleared their area. The point is that I could do so yesterday because I had seen them already. If I fail to do that today, I am destined to walk right in the trap.
Oh well, if nothing else they would teach me to be more ‘mindful’ of my surroundings :)
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