Looking me in the eye, the boy extends his withered arm toward me. Between a patchwork of scabs and abscesses running from shoulder to wrist, bubbles and boils of necrotic flesh look ready to fall away. Leprosy. An affliction so distant as to seem mythical, but in the horizon spanning slums of Delhi and throughout India, a frequent sight.
In my pocket, more Indian currency than he is likely to ever see, even if he were not dalit, an “untouchable” member of the lowest caste.
“No,” I tell him. “Chelli! Go away!”
He looks at the excesses of my digital camera, smart-fibered Patagonia jacket, backpack framed with space-age alloys and bottles of imported water.
I don’t bother explaining to the leprous child that I need so much because I am weak. Because my easy and indulgent Western lifestyle incurs countless dependencies. I nurse imported bottled water not for the taste, but because dysentery gets old after a few weeks.
I also don’t bother telling him, and others in his situation, that my behavior is in “his best interests.” Spare him a lecture about the villainy of colonial compassion, the “Civilizing Missions” of misguided bourgeois humanism.
He wouldn’t care anyway – he is just hungry.
This is a difficult conflict facing any long-term traveler. After days have stacked into weeks, months and longer on the road, it becomes clear that sometimes it is cruel to be kind.
The answer I arrived at? Give nothing, except to musicians and holy people.
In too many places can one see the death throes of once functional societies, centuries of culture eroded and discarded.
High in the Himalaya between Nepal and Tibet, young women feign injury to get the help of well intentioned and equipped trekkers. Once packs are opened, the girls’ interest invariably turned from medical supplies to chocolates or candies.
From the burning pyres of Varanasi to the villages in the maharajah deserts of Rajasthan, every child in India seems obsessed with asking for one thing: a pen. At some point, some morons or missionaries must have scoured the subcontinent, handing them out to children.
On my first trip into Cambodia, just after the country was first accessible, Khmer children were all smiles and sincerity. Most worked hard to earn any money, but none begged. Because these were “good kids,” other travelers rewarded this “upright behavior” with gifts. Westerners gave out small amounts of cash while Japanese city-slickers handed out fancy designer candies.
Less than a decade later, begging brats fill the temples of Angkor Wat and surrounding areas. Instead of actively working to affect their situation, they accept dependence and failure. Gone is the spark of ambition, replaced by the glaze of powerlessness and passivity.
In many places, giving in and giving out does not even achieve anything in the short term. Most of the begging, especially in India and Vietnam, is organized. Parents or older siblings take all the money collected by the children, essentially pimping them out on the streets.
With the arrival of the noble British Raj in India came a new custom that still continues today. Desperately poor parents breaking kneecaps, twisting limbs and disfiguring their children into income sources that support the entire family. It’s not a moral issue, it’s an act of necessity.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Sure, people gain the gratification of playing the benevolent provider, but this is misguided ego masturbation.
It’s tough, but sometimes you have to be tougher to do the right thing.
Kenneth Todd Ruiz, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at kruiz@ulv.edu.
