He stood there, at the traffic signal, a small begging bowl hanging from his left elbow. The signal, for me, was red and the seconds were ticking down from 180, slowly, steadily....
I knew he would, eventually, come to my window too and knock on the glass. Insistently. Knock... KNock... KNOck... louder, each time. Eventually, he did reach my car and knock on my glass window. Softly. Very tentatively.
Most of us, Mumbaikars - and, I daresay, elsewhere as well - develop a tunnel vision at moments like this. We go selectively blind. We refuse to even glance in the direction of the beggar, leave alone make eye contact.
In a few seconds he moved on.... not behind me, to the next vehicle, but back to the signal pole. Where he stood, that small begging bowl hanging from his left elbow. Given the safety of the distance between us, I now looked at him. And, for the first time, I actually SAW him.
The left hand, amputated just below the elbow, a small, incomplete hook of a stump turned up in a vee from which that bowl hung. The right hand, missing from the shoulder, completely missing so that he did not have even an armpit. A banian/vest, possibly white once upon a time, now visibly black with soot and grime with shades of grey and brown here and there. Dirty from years, possibly, of use. Dirty, but, for all that, still intact and, surprisingly, untorn. A lungi, of indeterminate colour, with shades of a faint blue, brown, etc, also dirty and seemingly soaked in dirt and grime.
My car's engine idling, my idle mind went into a quick turbo charged overdrive. Questions chased themselves around my head. Was he born this way? Or, was he a victim of those notorious beggar mafia gangs that kidnap children and maim them for life? A railway accident victim, perhaps? How does he eat? How does he bathe (and other stuff?!)? And so on...
And, even as I tried to keep pace with these sudden wild thoughts swirling around my head, something kind of plopped into my head.
That lungi, you see? How neatly it has been tied around his waist? Surely, he didn't do that all by himself? His hair, all salt & pepper, but combed quite neatly. A small, neatly trimmed goatee just barely covering that chin... Hmmmm.... interesting, these. Sherlock Holmes I am not but it seemed to me, this man has someone who, apparently lovingly, is taking care of him. Taking care of his grooming to the best of her/his ability.
And, I noticed, too, the way he stood there, at that traffic signal. Yes, there was no doubting the fact that he was a beggar. That bowl was a sure give away - as was the fact that he was, in actual fact, knocking at car windows, seeking alms. But the way he STOOD there, erect, there was a sense of pride that refused to die. He seemed to stand there, unbothered to beg, as if he was merely whiling away the time of the day... while someone else, perhaps, was tasked with looking after him.
Perhaps, in his mind, he did not see himself as a beggar.... which may have explained the fact that his knocking on my was not the normal, confident and increasingly strident/peremptory knock that one is so accustomed to hearing. Or, the fact that he approached merely two vehicles during that longish signal, choosing to go back and stand, aloof from the crowd.
He stood there, erect, head held high, a kind of a half sneer, a half smile, on his face. I wouldn't call that "Dignity" - but, surely, there was pride.
