The Beggar at the King's Gate

The opening of the story

There was once a city called Adrishtamulaparyanta, a long name that means "the city whose root and whose end no one has ever seen". Its streets ran on and on, one into the next. Nobody living there could remember a time before it, and nobody expected it ever to stop. In that city lived a beggar, and the people called him Nishpunyaka, "the man without merit", because as far as anyone could tell he had never in his life done one thing that might bring him good fortune.

He was a sorry sight. His body was covered in sores, fever came and went in him like a tide, his belly was swollen and his eyes were clouded, as if he looked at the world through dirty water. He wore rags tied together with string. In his hands, always, he carried a cracked clay bowl, and in the bowl were the scraps people had thrown out: stale rice, sour curds, crusts going green at the edges. He guarded that bowl the way other men guard gold. When he shuffled through the lanes, gangs of boys ran after him, threw stones at him and laughed at his limp.