The importance of being a beggar
Rushing pass by on a bicycle he heard a young voice begging,” Ay, sahib thoray paisay daina bhooki hoon. “The rider who himself was flooded away by the whirlpools of his thoughts stopped all of a sudden and looked behind. What he did was to throw a few coins in the mudded, ragged dupatta of that young beggar but what he saw was something else. Those few seconds -for which he stopped his cycle -, became eternity and the imploring eyes – a wild sea! I found him fixed in a trance like feeling, like a moment being frozen by the harsh brush stroke of a painter on the pinching fibers of canvas. Nothing special regarding the picture that I just described but I found it moving, so much so that I found a fragment of my very being somewhere pinned in that incident… the world of economics came tumbling down on the ground at the feet of the deity of Feel. As if money was not the dilemma of that puny girl’s life but she asked for herself being considered as a human being. A human who is first a manifestation of flesh and blood and then on the hierarchy of some description becomes the crown of the creation or so called a social animal with the special blessing called rationale -possibly the only thing that makes him/her a human being. Financial begging cannot be considered the dilemma, a profession or fate of a specific category of our society. It’s not the issue of Pakistani society only but it stands equally true for one part of the world as for any other corner of the same planet. Ranging from the famished jungles of Africa to the deserts of Sahara, from the outskirts of the cities of Asian countries to the very throbbing cities of any European state on the map of the world, beggars may take any form, any name but what they do is the same that is begging. There are professionals who are usually nomads; they also have the young ones who are drugs addicts or being kicked out from their homes because of some emotional, social or psychological crisis. In Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa you will find them in bunches waiting to welcome you out on the victory of shopping from big malls. Also in Peshawar Saddar one can find the begging women with their sleeping infants in their laps. Some of them are really ill and having serious medical issues for which they ask for money and donations. In the developed countries one can find them usually in the form of street buskers, busking around which I think is more respectable form of begging by showing one’s talent in the music and so on. One strange thing that I found out on my visit to Chitral in 2013 was that I did not find any beggars! The reasons may be many: 100 percent education rate among the age group below 40 years, being simple and contended hard workers and most important of all is that they work in any possible capacity, driving, shop keeping, manual working and so many other professions like medical, engineering, teaching and so on. This leaves with me a question that what exactly is begging? According to Wikipedia: “Begging or panhandling is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation.” The word “imploring” is the very term that makes this act of begging as begging because there is no promised payback. But is begging always or mainly about money? Is this act of imploring merely limited to the needs of life that can only be accessed through money? The history of begging dates back to the times when human history was not yet recorded. Abram Maslow in his theory of Hierarchy of Needs in 1943 year paper ‘A theory of human motivation’ in Psychological Review presented his notion of human needs in the form of pyramid having five levels of priorities on which the various categories of humans’ needs rest. For his observation he took the examples of famous and healthy people like Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass because for Maslow “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy”. If the same hierarchy of needs is applied on any normal human being the same will stand true for them too. Among these needs the physiological needs like breathing, eating, excretion and sex occupy the base of the pyramid. On the second shelf safety needs like safety for family, job security are placed. It is actually the third level of the pyramid in the theory that Maslow talks about love and belonging regarding friendship and family intimacy and relationships. The fourth level which is related to the self- esteem and fifth top level is the self-actualization. My interest lies in the third level of Maslow’s pyramid that how the realization of the worth for friends, family and dear ones becomes the base for budding the self-esteem and hence the actualization of one’s being. A beggar who asks for money may be doing so to fulfill the basic needs of his/her life like eating, drinking or shelter but how about the person who offers the donation? Does he/she do it out of merely a religious or social duty or to get self-emotional satisfaction which in turn fuels up his/her strain of doing well being? I think that is what I felt and saw in the act of that cycle rider donating few coins to that young girl; he saw his own salvation, his own respect and dignity by treating that girl more than a beggar-a human being. In this life cycle of humanity, we perform various acts and duties, not merely out of our interests or compulsions but because we all humans are dependent upon each other for our ultimate survival. Gulsanga the little puny beggar girl says, “I am poor, so, I am hungry for food, for cloths, water and home and that is poverty.” For her and so many like her, begging is to meet the demands of the most basic needs of human’s life as also established in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which otherwise cannot be met because of other possible alternatives like doing jobs or having some other acceptable profession. If begging on one hand is broadly and generally known in terms of donations, alms and financial charity then on the other hand it is taken in the sense of a symbiotic relationship that how much energy of love for humanity and reverence for our dear and near ones is shared by us as human beings. In Paulo Coelho’s famous book The Zahir, the writer talks about the need of sharing and participating in this benign spirit of energy of love, in the book there is an ever growing group of participants who share their personal “stories and energy”. During one of such meetings there comes the topic of poverty about which one of the participants says rhetorically “Do you really think that poverty has to do with having no money? … You’re the one who’s poor- you have no control over your time, you can’t do what you want, you’re forced to follow rules you didn’t invent and which you don’t understand …” This takes us to the level where life goes beyond the materialistic existence and looks on to the spiritual existence of things, words and happenings. It is true that with an empty stomach no one has the luxury to cherish the wonders of divine energy and passion for humanity but it is also a reality that what humanizes the humans is the realization of this experience. It is the absence of this recognition that though we in the current times are surrounded by all the facilities and gifts of scientific developments, we still are the picture of T.S Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”. We do have international and national data to have a count for the literally poor people, but the people who are emotionally poor hold no written record though they outnumber the prior case. Begging hence is not specified to the institution of economics but also exists in normal humans’ relationships where love, attention, friendship, care and forgiveness are being demanded and shared. This is the very process, through which houses are being made homes, fellows as friends, strangers as acquaintances and beggars humans. And this perhaps is one of the manifestations of the importance of being a beggar. In the present times human species are having a dearth of healthy emotional understanding. We need more of the charity of love, alms of humanitarian care and donations of Samaritan care. A smile won’t do any harm, a good greeting to a passerby won’t cost much, a silent act of generosity in the form of emotional and financial assistance won’t ask for the world’s treasure and most important of all keeping up somebody’s trust and giving a shoulder to one’s silent story are the small but strong steps through which one can save up the dying relations of our fellow beings. The writer is Lecturer at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar.]]>