I.You.Me.We.Us- Let me show you what poverty can be
It´s more than a social issue
The aroma of spiced chicken wafts in the hot summer air, poppadoms crackle. At the serving table, a woman hands a young teenager a steaming hot styrofoam plate. A grizzled man twists around on his seat, looking hopeful. She hands the plate to a woman who smiles up kindly to her. Children run around between everyone´s legs, giggling. The sun is blinding.
The ICC (Indian Catholic Community) event for the homeless in the parish is a success- the men and women in question are relaxed and enjoy both the food and the dance programme .
I´ve captured that story here.
But there is a story I haven´t told.
It´s a story of resentment and anger and bitterness but also one of compassion and humour and inspiration.
To tell about that side, it´s important to take the kid gloves off, once and for all.
It´s as Fr. Thomas Thandapally told when he requested I take photos of the homeless rather than parish community.
“This is about them, not us”.
84 years ago, George Orwell told that very story in his semi-autobiographical novel, “Down and Out in Paris and London”. The classic 1930´s memoir gives a compelling insight to the true nature of poverty and, in many ways, still rings true today.
Orwell wrote the book when he was down on his luck, trying to establish himself as a writer and journalist after quitting a senior position in the Burmese Police Force. It purports to introduce the reader to what was then considered somewhat of a demi-monde to polite society, a world of plongeurs (pot-washers), prostitutes and tramps and show that the differences between both groups are negligibile at best.
The average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
When I started volunteering at the Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen in the Gürtel area of Vienna, infamous for its drug deals, I would never have claimed the above quote to be true.
Young as I was, I unconsciously believed all of the men and women who came daily for a hot meal and a pastry to be illiterate and uneducated- till I got into conversation with a man who spoke better French than me.
Many were well-read, seeing as they spent a lot of their free times in public libraries where they could while away the day in peace before heading for a homeless shelter and could comfortably hold a conversation ranging on issues regarding politics to culture.
On the day I spent photographing the event, I got to talking with one man in particular who was very knowledgeable on camera technology- the talk we had regarding equipment in no ways differed to what I was used to discuss with peers on my journalism degree.
With that realisation comes the discovery of a sense of fierce pride especially inherent to the homeless. They are sometimes rowdy and boisterous and belligerent, traits which certain segments of society tend to see as signs of being perverse and ungrateful.
A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor
Yet what else can they be? In a society that regards them as a nuisance at best and as criminals at worst, anger is the only form of agency they have left. It´s a freedom they should not have to sacrifice, on any cost.
“Don´t take my picture, just don´t. I´ve had enough of Indians for a day”.
It was a comment that left me properly chagrined rather than getting me offended because it forcibly reminded me that I was dealing with a fellow human being with thoughts and feelings than a being living on charity.
A friend of mine once told me the thing that made her feel most ashamed was not the fact that she hadn´t given a destitute person money- it was the fact that she had hurried away without even stopping to look at him. His shout that he never wanted her money but only to be treated like any other person tells us everything we would want to know about a class of people that have long since been denigrated as second-class citizens.
I do not think there is anything about a beggar that gives modern men the right to despise him
The life lessons I took in from volunteering at the Missionaries of Charity for two years did not only change my views on poverty- they fundamentally changed me.
Humility was something I learned when I saw people with half the resources available to me facing each day with a smile- the teenager with her new born baby who despite everything was proud of her child and the man who hauled in a cart of bread and sharing it with the people around him despite being hungry himself.
They are exceptional people who I was fortunate to encounter and study from. Orwell wrote admiringly of the resilience of men who survived on slabs of bread and mugs of tea on their own, who scrounged for ends of tobacco and tricked and schemed and helped each other survive another day.
It´s an empathy I share- maybe because I was struggling myself when I began volunteering and interacting with the homeless and they showed me that it´s not the end when you are down on your knees- it´s the best point to start fighting again when you have nothing left to loose and everything yet to gain.
You just got to say to yourself “I´m a free man in here” and then everything is alright
