The toughest ones to deal with are the children, sometimes they weep, sometimes they make vague eating gestures when they approach you on the street or when you’re waiting in an autorickshaw at a traffic stop. The boys are dressed in ragged clothing, or barely at all; the little girls sometimes wearing shabby saris or salwars. It’s hard to reassure yourself that they are likely in the exploitive employ of ruthless begging syndicates that may have purchased them from their families, or even by their own parents who use them to collect money for drugs or drink. Sometimes they’ll speak a little English – “Sir, hello, sir…10 rupees, sir…” Rather than money, I’ll hand over food or water – whatever I have that they couldn’t then turn over to some scum exploiter. Once I gave a half-bottle of water to a little boy who was working the area outside of Patel Bros. grocery in Bandra after he pestered me for change, then ‘pani’. He showed me a notebook in which he was writing words in Marathi, and I asked him if he went to school, but he wouldn’t answer in a way I could understand. Probably he was speaking in Marathi, also. He tried to get me to purchase a pencil sharpener for him, motioning to the dull pencil he’d been using. I refused, but then after a few minutes sprung for the 5 rupee item from a nearby stall. When I returned, he had run off, leaving me with a small souvenir of the incident. That this all happened just to the side of a gate for Mehboob Productions, one of the major film studios in India, further underscored the gross inequality we’d covered in class last semester.

The other day while I was picking up some eyeglasses I’d purchased from an optical store at Infinity Mall in Andheri, a wretchedly thin boy of about 8 or 9 rushed to the side of the taxi once he saw that I was white. He wore a filthy dhoti, and his eyes were reddened and carbuncled. In his arms he clutched a toddler, and wailed tearfully at me for a handout in the most pathetic manner I’ve seen since being here. In this game, the con is watertight, the mark is practically in the can every time. “Ek minat, ek minat, beta,” I said wearily, nearing meltdown from a nearly hourlong cab ride that I would have avoided altogether in favor of a cheaper, faster train ride were it not for the load I was carrying. I dropped two rupee coins into his tiny hand and he started then to beg for 10 more. The cabbie drove on, leaving him behind, as we were searching for an ATM so I could draw some more cash to pay for the fare he’d exacted from me with a roundabout trip through neighborhoods I’d never seen. I was a sitting duck for scammers on this day – my last in Mumbai before I left for the U.S. via a night flight. Once I drew the cash from an Indusland ATM across the way, I entered the mall to see the two little boys merrily play-wrestling on the sidewalk, all traces of desperate hunger seemingly vanished in the absence of the mark. I can make judgments, come up with theories and try to justify why people are driven to this behavior. I can even feel smugly self-righteous for giving, not giving, outright ignoring, staring blankly into their faces even when they approach and tug at my arm. But I get the feeling that it’s never a matter of simple poverty – i.e.: I am lacking in A, so I will beg for it from X person who is not deprived. I just don’t know the situation of these child beggars, and I never will truly. We can approach an understanding through our case studies and focus group discussions, and the myriad other tools at our disposal. But what if things are so much more complex than observed choices and behaviors?

I do give unreservedly to the hijra. Mainstream Indian society coexists with them, but does not accept them to the degree where traditional employment is an option. Abhilash tells me that aside from dancing at weddings and child naming rituals (a practice which amounts to extortion in his hometown of Bhopal. The head of the hijra group will actually meet with the family in advance of their event to negotiate a payoff to ensure that they stay away and don’t create a nuisance with their dancing and – yes- ‘flashing’) they sustain themselves through prostitution and this form of begging. When they enter the train compartments, things steam up. They’ll sidle up to men and flirt, sometimes as Abhilash says, attempting to stroke the faces of clean-shaven guys.

I saw this nearly happen on a train ride with Nivenden, our third and final roommate who moved into Abhilash’s place just a few days before I returned from Orissa and Calcutta. We were on a train from Thane to Chinchpokli, on the way to work, when a conspicuously-dressed hijra boarded, dressed I a south Indian manner with a colorful sari and white flowers in her hair. The guy sitting next to Nivenden got up to get down form the train, and I said to Nivenden, jokingly, “Aren’t you going to offer the seat to the lady there?” He looked at me quizzically, and started to explain that it wasn’t really a woman, but I headed him off. The hijra stopped in front of a young man who gave a few rupee coins, placed hands on the donor’s head and murmured some kind of a blessing, before moving on down the aisle.

The blessing/curse associated with hijra compounds the relationship between them and India’s mainstream society. Apparently, people are more willing to give to hijra to avoid a curse, since such a pox from one who leads such a harsh life would be catastrophic to a family. Here, some of the lowest appear to wield some kind of upper hand, indeed.