online fokir

Living in Dhaka, it is impossible to ignore the beggars out on the streets, at your door, on your door window in the car, in the buses, trains, steamers... on the way to work, on the way from work, on the way to the restaurant, in front of a snacks joint... they are omnipresent.

For me, they invoke range of emotions, based on the milieu. From sympathy, to empathy, to utter disgust and disappointment on the other extreme. For most, it is a way of life, this is what they do for a living. From looking at them, you know that they have adapted it as their permanent means of livelihood. And what is alarming is that they start off early. The horrid stories you hear about parents leaving their kids with the "bua", only to find the child being "rented out" to beggars who would use her as a ploy to get more. There is a steady demand for young children among the beggars. Then there's the group with the missing limbs - I keep thinking that Slumdog Millionaire did not portray is correctly. People cannot be that cruel. But the more I think, the more plausible it sounds. Why is it that all of them now a days sing the same songs?

I had gone to Cox's Bazar a few months ago - all the kids by the beach asking for handouts guised it well. They would walk up to you and ask - in their most serious voice - "Gaan shunben?" And before you can react, they would start with a track from the popular movie Monpura. Each and every one of them would sing the same songs. Did they attend a school somewhere? What would the curriculum be like?

It is unsettling that so many would flock to Dhaka each day (as per yesterday's newspaper, more than 2000 new people flock to Dhaka everyday!), only to resort to such means. And I don't know how to react when I find it is not only in third world countries like ours where such things happen. Maybe it is not that obvious in other countries, but now that we are blessed with the digital revolution, it has taken on a different form. Now we have online beggars!

I read an article that came out in the discovery website (http://news.discovery.com/tech/panhandling-hits-the-internet.html) and was amused, to say the least. The predominantly streetwise business has taken off, into the cyberspace!