I was walking along a busy street of New Road in Kathmandu when I heard a loud voice of a beggar. "I am hungry, I am dying of hunger," he was wailing and extending hands to every passerby to get something to eat. He was about 25 years old, short and thin and looked like he had not eaten for days.The sight of people begging for survival is common in Kathmandu. One comes across them frequently in Kathmandu's main roads. The first thing one does during such moment is give a rupee or two to the beggar and move ahead. I could have done the same thing to this man. But I could not. The cry "I am hungry, I have not eaten for days" started to ring in my ears. I looked around to see if anyone was going to offer him alms. But there was none. I could not tolerate his plight. I perspired and my heartbeat quickened.
I felt like if I did not do something for this man my heart would burst. So I hurried towards a restaurant and ordered a set of meal for him but they said it would take at least half an hour to prepare the meal. I could not afford to hear his pleas any more. So I bought a club sandwich, an ice cream and a bottle of mineral water for him. The beggar ate savagely. Then I felt comfortable. I could do no more than that for that moment.
That evening when I returned home, his image haunted me. I began to think about his family, whether he had gone to school and what drove him to beggary. I decided to arrange for his living as well as some light work. So I went looking for him in the same street where I had found him before. He was never to be found there. Somehow I still feel very bad about that person and take a pause to find if he is around whenever I am in the area.
Even more disturbing than this was my recent experience in Bhaisepati, Lalitpur. I was out for a morning walk, when I saw a man in rags, wandering out aimlessly. Apparently, he was very hungry. A man appeared there. From the way he looked I gathered he was the owner of an eatery. He had come to throw food wastes into the garbage container. He started dumping the waste—which contained leftover meals, stale bread and stinking curries—but stopped when he noticed the man in rags was looking at the food being wasted. Then he beckoned the hungry man. I thought he was offering some money to him. But no! "So you are hungry?" he told the hungry soul, "Eat these leftovers, they taste good." He was asking him to eat from the stinking garbage.
I was agitated. I could not see the sight of a poor soul being treated like a dog. I felt like going up to this man and spitting on his face. I restrained myself. I gave whatever money I had to the hungry man and returned home. But his appearance haunted me throughout the night. Then I decided to meet him next morning and do something for him. However, he was never to be found again.
I often think of these two poor souls when I see people begging food for survival in Kathmandu. A number of such people in the world are pushed to begging. Why has this happened? I believe there are two reasons: lack of empathy for others and desire to hold and possess wealth as much as possible but not giving to the needy.
Don't get me wrong. I am not glorifying myself. I have always tried to do something good for suffering people. Helping others needs courage. It needs a selfless sense of empathy—the softness for being hurt when others are in pain, ability to cry when others are crying. This constitutes true act of humanity and is essential for humanism. Sanskrit poet Shankuka says "Just as a body void of life/is no more than a piece of wood/so too, I hold, is life without/any feeling for another's good." Sadly, we have never realized the importance of empathy.
We have not cultivated the habit of giving. We have only wanted to possess things.
There may not be a man on this earth who may not have had his own belongings—perhaps a car or a house or land of his own. The rich may have a lot of things with themselves the poor may have just a pair of utensils, some pieces of clothes and only a roof to protect from rain, heat and cold. Even the poorest of the poor have something to call their own—besides their own bodies. This means the sense of belonging and possession is integral to human life. But our greed is such that we tend to acquire more and more of things, that which we may never need in our life.
Our nature is such that we won't be satisfied even if we have everything in the world. I remember a verse from Subhashitavali which says, "One with a hundred wants a thousand/the thousand-owner to make a million/the millionaire to be king/the king to be an emperor/the emperor a god, and he/the lord of heaven, and even then to have some still higher position—/there is no end to craving."
Unless the rich transform such cravings into concerns for fellow human beings, the poor and the unfortunate will always have to suffer. Our craving is simply the product of greed and avarice. To hoard and possess things other than the ones we need for day to day living is to deprive fellow humans from those things. Let us practice art of giving. You will feel at peace, you will feel great.
The author is an hotelier with interest in peace and humanism
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