More Beggars

On the one hand, things are more and more hoppin' here in the little town of Bodhgaya, where the usual population is probably somewhere around 250 most of the year, and is now swelling to something like 250 thousand. Our honored leader (really, I shouldn't be so irreverent...), the Dalai Lama, will be showing up here next week, and most of the Tibetan population of India is coming to see him, not to mention whatever tourists there are in the area. I was surprised (but not too much) to learn that Richard Gere (yes, THE Richard Gere) was going to come here too, and he has his own little room here at Root Institute (where he stays every time he comes). And here I am, working the reception desk!! But, alas, he cancelled, so the "only" celebrity we will have in the area will be His Holiness.

On the other hand, here I am (again), sitting in front of a computer, trying to build a database for Root Institute, in between phone calls and guests checking in and checking out. Quite busy, and basically doing pretty much what I've been doing for the last 15 or 20 years (or more, but who's counting?) Weird, in more ways than one.

So there aren't too many new and interesting things to write about lately. Still, I spend my afternoons with a bunch of "road-boys", as they call themselves, and I think it's pretty interesting from a anthropological point of view. I've written about them before, but I keep on finding out new things about them. First of all, I owe it to Bijay (whom everybody calls Gudu) to explain that when he told me about his sponsor that "sometimes I lie with him" - it was a misunderstanding - he meant "lie" as in not telling the truth, and I understood "lie" as in lie down, because of the "with" in there. (I found this out later, when he explained that he "lies with" other people too, and the context was different.) None of them have such good english. Actually, Bijay is not his real name, it is just the name he uses with this sponsor of his. And I also have to say that, even though this character makes his living by getting money from tourists, he has never asked me for anything.

Lying is a way of life for some of these guys, something they feel is necessary in order to survive. So I do take whatever they tell me with a grain of salt, but still, they can be very sincere. Now that I've spent so much time with them, they tell me about their lives, and I've seen most of them crying one time or another. Sometimes I think I'm in a high-school frat house, even though they are all in their twenties. They all have girl-friends, or they want to, and they tell me about their ups and downs with the ladies of their choice.

Now that Anil has opened his restaurant, that is where they all sleep (because "road-boys" means that they live on the road, with no home). This isn't saying much, because the restaurant is a few bamboo poles tied together with some burlap bags or leftover saris serving as walls, and the "beds" are benches that they built out of mud and a few bricks, and covered with a few rags. The floor is more packed dirt, so cleaning up is really not a problem - you just drop whatever crumbs or matchsticks there are on the floor, and it eventually gets ground in. The door is a cloth decorated with Tibetan symbols. And the cold at night is enough to make you see your breath when you're talking. They share their clothes, shoes, food, cigarettes, and liquor (lots of liquor, if they get the money). And when Anil gets really tired, everybody else closes up shop for him. Anil told me last night that he has a brain tumor, and from other things I've seen and heard, I believe him. But no-one is talking about surgery or treatment, because there is no way in the world any of them could pay for something like that. So they just live with what they have, in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Root Institute, I mean), we had a Beggar's Banquet the day after christmas. About 300 crippled men, women and children came in to be checked by some high-ranking doctor who came from Delhi, and he promised wheelchairs, surgery, etc. for about half of them (for free). This is evidently some publicity stunt he's doing, but if he actually follows through with his promises, then who cares? I don't know if you exactly get used to seeing people crawling on their hands and knees, or using their arms like crutches while their legs are slung over their elbows like so much excess appendages, but there are so many of them that you can't get excited by every one that you see any more. Along with the huge inflow of tourists, there are just as many beggars flooding the streets. And sometimes you manage to pass by them while they are busy with something else, like this morning, when the row of kids that I passed by were too busy laughing and joking between themselves, to wave their legs (not quite as thick as my arms, and completely bent out of shape) at me and ask for money.

Do I seem preoccupied with beggars and cripples? I don't know how I'm coming across there. The fact is that I am surrounded here - I read somewhere that India, more than any other Asian country "comes at you" with the sights and the smells and the experiences. And it's true, there is no way you can ignore the pollution, the noise, the poverty. But at the same time, it is so real that there is no way that you can forget you are alive (which is something that happened to me quite often when I was on the 9-to-5 routine). The people are always there, and here in Bodhgaya, I have been presented with gifts by people who met me for five minutes. A child who tried to sell me a lotus flower (tourists buy them to put on the Bodhi tree) - ended up giving it to me as a gift, and I never saw him again. A rickshaw driver handed me a small box of incense after I paid him, and I never saw him again either. It definitely gives you something to think about.