Introducing Nitin Rohra from Kanpur, a businessman by profession and a musician at heart who likes to say things in a song. He sees for stories everywhere, in emotions and people, in events and situations, in answered and unanswered questions, in remembrance and in longing, in promises and assurance, in love and romance, in children and grown-ups, in memories and the present. The story and the composition blend together and that creates a song!! Meaningful lyrics, soulful music and heart-warming emotion are what he always tries to imbibe in his songs.
The Bhagvad Gita, Chapter 17 Verse 22 says:
अदेशकाले यद्दानमपात्रेभ्यश्च दीयते | असत्कृतमवज्ञातं तत्तामसमुदाहृतम् || 22|| adeśha-kāle yad dānam apātrebhyaśh cha dīyate asat-kṛitam avajñātaṁ tat tāmasam udāhṛitam “And that charity, which is given at the wrong place and wrong time to unworthy person's, without showing respect, or with contempt, is held to be of the nature of ignorance”.
India is a land of saints and seers, living purely on alms, with no possessions and or permanence of place, giving us a practical view of "khaali haath aaye thhey, Khaali haath jaana hai". . As they say, “The joy in giving is much more fulfilling than the joy of receiving”. We give alms, donations and come forward for any good cause like feeding poor people, distributing clothes etc. Anything that appeals to our basic human self or goodness in us, we open our hearts and pockets for them. At times, it also breaks our hearts to see our donations misused or mismanaged, but then donating for most part is done for self-satisfaction. You may also have come across a begger whom you gave some money for food and later found him “puffing a beedi”, and you felt bad as money given for needs was used for pleasure, but aren’t those people eligible for pleasure?
Let me offer an analogy again, suppose a Rat nibbled into your stuff out of hunger, and you out of generosity start sparing some food aside for him. So what should be the outcome? Hopefully the rat will not bite into your stuff, but your place will surely be full of rats!
If you feed somebody once, they will be hungry again, if you offer a shelter to the needy, they would need it the same every day, no wonder these are lifelong needs.
With every coin or note we drop, we kill the self-respect of the receiver and also their motivation to earn their living. It seems like, we as a donating society are creating beggars, but is that a responsible thing to do? We are not addressing the problem as such by shedding a coin or two. It is just a quick fix, a momentary one! Well! There are natural disasters and calamities and they need such quick fixes in huge denominations. In such events, donating generously is just the need of the moment. The ever-increasing number of beggars in the country also suggests that this is building up like an organised crime and there may be powerful people behind it. And the increasing number of disappearing children every year, can we connect something here?
One of the oldest techniques to win a war was to cut the supplies of the enemy, so the quick fix here might be to stop giving cash to the beggars. The next time you think of donating, just use your “Dimaag wala Filter” to check if the receiver is a worthy one, because If we do not address the core of this problem today then having the largest population of young people in the world, how many more can we expect? BEGGARS NOT BY DESTINY BUT BY CHOICE!
Follow Retro Kolkata on Instagram
