Compassion at Home

The Times of India group has come up with another social inititative, called the Compassion Day, today. I think compassion is a very important human emotion  that is sometimes seen lacking in big cities in India. So it is good to be reminded about this important emotion, at least once a year.

Go to any big city in India and you will see extreme poverty and affluence growing side by side. Big malls and bigger shanties coexist in the same area. You can see beggars standing at major traffic junctions, temples and shopping complexes. 'Compassion', according to Wikipedia, is the understanding or empathy for the suffering of others. People like me who live in big cities often become immune to the feeling of 'compassion' when we constantly encounter squalor and abject poverty in our surroundings. 

In my own neighbourhood, I have always seen beggars sit right outside a popular ice cream shop and a restaurant. Whenever I go into the shop or the restaurant, I see the beggars and feel extremely guilty and aware of the fact that I am splurging when they are starving. When I visit popular temples, I am often irritated by the line of beggars outside the temple. The more popular the temple, the longer is the line of beggars. The cynic in me sometimes argues that it is just clever positioning on the part of the beggars. But there is no escaping the fact that poverty in India is glaring and there is no way that we, the citizens of India, can exclude ourselves of the responsibility of creating a more equal society.

There are so many invisible people in our society, the watchmen, cleaners, waiters, hawkers, vendors, cobblers, maids and all kinds of helpers. You only get to enjoy their services or products, you never pay attention to them as individuals. So may be today can be dedicated to these faceless people to whom you can show gratitude in one way or the other. They live on the fringes of our society and yet we cannot imagine our lives without them. With respect to begging, I am still confused as to how we can reduce the number of beggars in the city, I think the only way to deal with it is to give, and give wholeheartedly. Only movies show people who are professional beggars. May be they exist, but so do professionals who cheat and steal and lie their way to the top.