Generous? Think twice before giving Rs 1 as alms

Mar 24, 2012 - P.A. Jebaraj |

chennai

Tags:

crime

What’s a rupee worth? Not much, it appears. Give even beggars a rupee and they could toss it back as a passenger learnt at the Tambaram railway station on Thursday.

Accosted by a drunk beggar, he dipped into his pocket and pulled out a rupee, but to his surprise the man with the tattered clothes and dirty hands, told him to keep it and walked away with a swagger.

The next day was no different. As this correspondent watched the beggar was again on his rupee bashing spree at the Tambaram station.

Anyone offering him one rupee or two found the money returned. They got a earful too and if they didn’t know how costly living was in Tambaram when compared to Chengalpattu and Villupuram towns they certainly learnt about it from him.

“Tambaram is now a city and one rupee will not buy you anything here. You take this rupee and have a good day. Next time don’t give me less than five rupees,” the beggar told a young couple chit chatting at the station, who didn’t know whether to laugh or be affronted. It was the same with a woman passenger who gave him two rupees. To her surprise the coin was returned as the beggar went off in search of more “generosity.”

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/136603" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-af5fa95b9efe302c55a95f1bf770c6d6" value="form-af5fa95b9efe302c55a95f1bf770c6d6" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85657371" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>