Thoughts from Thamil

Off to Thamil later for a wander and some dinner. Interesting but quite 'in your face' after the gentler atmosphere of Patan. We get asked for money by someone begging, making us both feel conflicted as to what the 'right' thing to do is. The general advice is not to give money to beggars but to donate to an organisation instead. There are clear reasons why giving money to children is a bad idea as what child will go to school if they can make what to them is huge sums of money from tourists. I am guessing the same arguments apply to adults. Harder though when someone is talking about their "two small babies" and you are so deeply conscious of your own relative wealth. In the event we were both so unsure of what to do we ended up buying him some food from a shop, knowing as we did so he would probably instantly sell it back to the shopkeeper - which he did. I realise that the internal conflict is mostly caused by a confusion as to what is the best thing to do.  I wish to live in a way that at least goes some way to acknowledge my own relative comfort and the needs of others but it is not always easy to know how best to do that.