Is this fair?

We went around shopping in this street market in India

while this man dragged his disabled body and begged for some change
with what's left of his body.

Is this fair?



I came back from India with mixed emotions. My India trip was more academic and business oriented. India has received tremendous attention from all around the globe as one of the star emerging markets. But the India I had imagined in the classrooms of Georgetown and the India I had sketched out based on the newspaper articles and other reading materials was nothing more than a proof of my ignorance.

I've seen beggers before, those with no legs or arms, dragging their bodies through the crowd of people who seemed so busy to get to their destinations and paid no attention to these people for whom even $1 would mean the world. But living in the US and Korea, and traveling around the European countries, I've never encountered beggers with exposed amputated legs or arms. They were always hidden, as if they were the reasons for "normal" people's disdain... for this man, and for others who came up to us in similar shapes, their amputated legs were the reasons why they had to be out on the street and the sources of their income simultaneously. To some people these amputated legs are what makes them "inferior," what an ignorance.

What makes us better than this man whose soul has escaped from his eyes?

the girls picking the lice out of their mom's hair in front of a luxurious shopping center?

boys knocking on our car window with what seemed to be fake blood running down his face?

To me, nothing. If anything, we owe them.