Begging Beyond Boundaries

It has been long since I have posted, but I suppose being in Bombay on a vacation is a reason good enough for not penning. With Mukul around, I have done so many things in the last few days, that it would take up considerable amount of time to write it all. But there are these few incidents that I cannot resist blogging.
Yesterday while passing time at Dadar TT before the 3 pm Rang De Basanti show at Chitra, a child of about 14, with his hands stretched, begged for money. This guy, dark skinned and thin, face smeared with yellow paint, with no shirt on his body and with the lower garment resembling a skirt, held a whip in his hands. Somehow, I felt that this boy was South Indian. "Nimma hesaru enu?"(What is your name?), I said, using whatever limited knowledge of Kannada I have. Sure enough, Ramesh replied in Kannada. I asked him a few more questions in Kannada. After this, he thought that I would pay, but then he was mistaken. I do not encourage begging. A kilometer away near Ruia, after I had the famous idli at Mani's, I met Ramesh's clone. Dressed exactly like Ramesh, his name was something that I could not decipher even after asking him twice. This chap was from Gulbarga in Karnataka. These incidents of beggars coming from a different states are not isolated ones. How can I forget the Marathi family that I encountered on the streets of Bangalore,not once but many times? In this era of disappearing boundaries, can this profession be left out?