I couldn’t help but imagine the emotions that he would be experiencing.
I studied at a college in one of the small cities of North Karnataka – the days were hot but the evenings were cooler and so I’d take long walks near the outskirts of the city. During one such walk, I stumbled upon a man pulling a hand-cart with a dead body on it. I sympathetically enquired with the municipality labourer lugging the hand-cart and learned that the deceased man was a beggar and the autopsy had revealed the cause of death as starvation.
After a life filled with pain, hunger and endless struggle the cold naked body of the poor man lay peacefully on the rough wooden hand-cart. The irony of this scene being played out didn’t escape me at all. The man pulling the dead man seemed to have had his share of struggles in life too – possibly the same, if not more. I couldn’t help but imagine the emotions that he would be experiencing. Sorrow definitely, maybe a bit of anger because the labourer still had to endure those daily struggles while the dead man was now free of them, and finally some joy since the beggar had finally made it out of the cycle. There were probably countless other indescribable feelings that swept the labourer as he trudged along towards the final resting place of the anonymous beggar.
Mesmerised by this emotionally charged environment, I had followed this hand-cart all the way to the graveyard without realising it. The image of the shrivelled and starved corpse gnawed at my mind squeezing out every last dreg of sympathy I had for the man. The trance I was in turned the sympathy into sorrow and I couldn’t help myself mourning the dead man like I would’ve mourned someone dear. But the anonymity of the dead beggar somehow ensured that the tears that I shed inside didn’t appear outside.
As the municipality labourer dug the grave, my thoughts ventured into philosophical territory – how we arrive alone and leave alone. Some great men have said that the impact or influence of one’s life is evidenced by the number of people who appear at one’s funeral. But wouldn’t that be too simplistic an argument? Don’t the same rules apply to poorer folk? Surely this dead beggar influenced many people in many different ways, good and bad, voluntarily or otherwise. But at his funeral there were just two men – the labourer who was doing his job and me, appearing out of nowhere. The labourer and I buried the beggar after performing the bare minimum last rites. By now, I was overwhelmed by the sorrow and didn’t care to stop the flood of tears running freely down my cheeks.
As I walked back home, the thoughts about the beggar’s demise lingered on in my mind. The beggar probably died a little every day. Braving everything from the unpredictable weather to the taunts of condescending men, from the lathis of policemen to the repeated evictions by authorities, the negligence of motorists, the hurtful jest of children, the pseudo-sympathy of God-fearing men and many more. He could’ve easily endured more than any man ever endured!
When beggars die there are no comets seen but the heavens themselves blaze forth over the death of princes. The dichotomy of it all!