Seeing poor homeless people is no new experience. Coming from India, poverty in all its ugliness is not a novel sight. Though there is one aspect of poverty that I only noticed here in USA.
New York has its fare share of homeless people. I would not call them "poor" as the term is used in India (poor in India is starving, even a homeless in USA would have a drink of Pepsi), but nonetheless they are poor. Living on the streets, their plight, especially in cold snowy months of winter - when you see them sleep on manhole covers which are comparatively warm from all the steam rising from city's gutters and subways - is gut wrenching. When you see the light and warmth and riches beyond imagination just a few feet away, you can't but feel bewildered by this strange world.
There is a particular old homeless man who lives on the steps of a church near my home. I have seen him almost everyday for the past two years. Begging the passing mass of humanity for money or food. I must admit I paid him passing attention; he was a one-dimensional personality, sitting on those steps. Then one beautiful sunny day when I was going my way I saw him coming towards me from the distance. There was a policeman standing on the corner and when he saw the old man he said something to him. I did not hear what he said, but it seemed like a greeting, a "how do you do?" that we exchange a hundred times over the course of the day. And the old man gave a broad genuine from the bottom of his heart happy smile. A smile that transformed his face, a smile that changed him, a smile that made him a person from that non-descript one dimensional man that I was used to seeing. I had passed him by before the smile ended, but I wonder how lonely a person must be to be filled with such joy at being recognized, on hearing a friendly voice. I have had my share of days when I have felt lonely, but to feel alone day after day, with no end in sight? That is a fate I cannot imagine, a state that I would find impossible to survive.
Today on my way I saw the old man again. Sitting on the usual steps, begging for money the usual way, I passed him by in the rich and glittering city of New York, with my Ipod and Bose headphones, wondering what a strange world this is...