Beggars

Yesterday, one of my objectives for the day was to observe people in a park. Observing people helps me improve and develop the characters I create for animation or film.

So I was off to Cubbon Park, near M.G.Road in Bangalore, to observe people. I generally noticed many street vendors, family’s having their picnic and lot of couples sitting on the benches placed under huge trees and having their time. I walked around the park and of tiredness I found a bench to sit on. My vision was scanning around the whole park to try and observe all the people I could.

Suddenly I found a group of 3 beggars approaching one of the couples sitting at a near distance from me. My first reaction was to get up and move myself out of their visual radius since I hated being mobbed by such a group at least. But once I moved out from there, I started noticing the beggars who by now mobbed that couple, weren’t letting the couple to ignore them. It came to point where the couple ignored them to the extent that the beggars were touching the couple and giving their ritual blessing which normally are intercepted a curses in disguise. The couple at the end of it all couldn’t even escape by paying one of them alone but he had to shell out his wallet to pay all three, especially notes and not coins. The beggars, satisfied moved on with their aim to mob other people in the park.

The crowd was pretty huge since it was a weekend and in the middle of a buzzing city. The beggars carried on next to a group of families who were picnicking in the pleasant afternoon. The families jointly contributed to the beggar’s demands just for their quick departure which did happen and saved their picnic from a lot of embarrassment.

The beggars moved on and interestingly they moved in a group only and they only picked on couples or groups and not passerby’s or single’s.

They moved on with their mission to accomplish and I drifted out of there after following them for a short while obviously with them not noticing.