'Begging. I'm tryinging to understand the relationship it established between two human beings,' I said. 'The other day I was pestered by a young boy who was as handsome as god. He didn't look at all wretched. Laughing, I refused to give him anything. In the end he laughed too, and his demand became more and more familiar until they seemed to be a kind of game. I went on walking, and then we got lost in the Botanical Gardens in the middle of the forest of the famous 200-year old banyan tree's self-propagating roots. Emboldened by my obvious goodwill, he was just about to search my pockets. I stopped and looked at him. I said to myself: 'A yong Arab would have already had his pants down ten times! But everything about his behaviour discouraged the slightest sexual advance. Yes, the young poor of India are cloaked in a mantle of innocence. You can't touch the Untouchables, not because of their purity. There is an absolute incompatibility between begging an prostitution. The prostitutes in the red-light distiricts of Bombay are superbly dressed, their hair is impeccable, and they move around in what look like theatre sets.'
'Of course, ' said Karl. 'Prostitution presupposes that the prostitute is desired by the client. It is her professional duty to be beautiful, seductive, provocative. This relationship also exists in a certain sense in begging. But in that case it is you who without realising it are handsome, seductive and provocative in the eyes of the beggar. The money or the shirt you give to the beggar is a piece of yourself or of your universe that you are delivering up to his concupiscence. The rich man is the poor man's whore.'
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