Saturday, June 29, 2013

The Fallen Woman On The Street


drunken
dilemma
unbelievable
sights
not trusting
what you saw
70 mm
cinemascope
the street is
a cinema
like celluloid
crispiness
humanity
in deaths jaw
the end is
inevitable
an interlude
that claws
despair
more despair
irreparable
remorse
life a kinetic
force
prostituted
by priestly
pimps
silhouette
street
whores
a god
angry
bewildered
with the
flaw in his
manufacturing
unit has shut
all doors
pestilence
doom and wars
life a ghastly farce
brutalized traumatized
life as a woman
with deathly scars

God I Am Ok



a hard bed
is better
than a bed
of roses
the thorns
an integral
part of my
cosmic
path
that
leads
me to
you
a short
cut albeit
they say
i know
on some
other planet
some other
time i will
meet you
one day
god of
the streets
the only
god to
whom
we pray
no church
no temple
no mosque
our god
is as
homeless
like us
penniless
hungry
destitute
he too
begs
like us
on the
highway

Mother I Wont Forget You Come What May



that you
begged
to keep
me alive
till this
day
begging
outside
gods
house
on Friday
a house
he visits
but does
not stay
touching
healing
others
besides
those
who
pray
mother
tell me
is god
everywhere
does he care
broken wings
of hope he
will repair
god thank
you for
this breath
this air

Life Has Not Changed For The Muslim Beggar On The Street


for some alms
some food to eat
i shot her on our feast
among well dressed
folks on ramzan eid
after they finished
the namaz she did
greet her own happiness
incomplete .. beg beg
compete ..her fate
she could not cheat

Oh God Forgive Me For My Sins



of cursing you
for my birth
being born
in my mothers
womb a motherly
dustbin..my
putrid hope
half out
half in
sickly pain
my second
skin through
thick and thin
a game i
could never
win ..out on
a cosmic wheel
unending spin
some smile
some grin
seeing me
as a rusty
corrugated
corroded tin
on a board
of humanity
i am simply
of no importance
they wonder
how i came in

Marziya Shakir 22 Month Old Madness Compassion Face To Face

Nerjis Asif Shakir 14 Month Old - Madness Compassion Face To Face

Nerjis Asif Shakir .. Compassion Madness Face To Face

The Umbrella Lady of Bandra Reclamation - Is She Mad


She stays at Bandra Reclamation , her protection in life , was a single umbrella , from the vagaries of nature heavy showers and all, but once the shed belonging to a lady who sells tea became a pucca structure she got a shade cover over her head and did not need the eponymous umbrella anymore .

This is an earliest shot, now I never called her a beggar , because she does not beg,, I did not call her mad I was not sure .. but after documenting creative madness and poetic madness I think she fits the bill..she is as mad as I am or more.


She lives her life squatting , I have never seen her stand I have never heard her talk,, she is a landmark when you enter this lane where the head of Mumbai BJP Advocate Ashish Shelar stays .. so lot of bigwigs will pass this lane now , Mr Baba Siddiqui MLA also passes this lane once during elections , hands folded for another chance ..less said about the others .. but nobody has ever bothered to place a rose in her hand add a smile to her face ..

My grand daughters both give her money and are aware of her existence ..I showed them the real meaning of charity and the purpose of our street photography.. it should touch a chord with or without without words.

So for the time being I take a break from my poetic madness ,, come back to the living sane .. thank you for viewing this set as pictures poems blog ad metaphor..

The Mad Man Of Bandra More Dead Than Alive


I have stopped shooting him, I have stopped shooting life of late , there was a time I would never leave home without my camera it was the silhouette of my being.. but I too have become a bit like the madman of Bandra.

I ask myself why am I shooting pictures glorifying the living dead ..is there something wrong with my head ..what is the purpose of recording all this ..I have loads of negatives slides prints at home and the very thought makes my wife go crazy.. I thought I would put them to sleep.. my very earliest tryst with photography on film and slide.

I could give them to an archive , but who wants amateur shots of forgotten sleepless time.
I dont sell my pictures people dont buy the kind of pictures I shoot.. at the Kumbh I met a foreigner who said he would buy all my hijra pictures once he returned to Mumbai.. but I am still waiting for him.. if I did sell them I would put the money to good charitable cause...

So life is a fucked anomaly .. words are seeping pain prostitute like posing as blogs.

I have lost it ..too.

The MadMan of Bandra Now As Is Where Is

The Mad Man of Bandra When He First Came To Our Area



These are the earliest pictures I have shot of him, he was cleaner, and gradually he let it go...now he is completely a gone case.

I dont know if there is a NGO dealing with cases such as this, we are more concerned about stray dogs cats but human life has lost its priority.. imagine he has been living here on the street for over two years .. and not a single soul knows his story...

And I have shot him without any purpose or agenda .. merely as a street peripheral anomaly of life.

Now he is not a Christian or the Sisters of Mercy might have touched him.. though they touch other people too who are not Christians I must reiterate ..Mad people have no sense of propriety or religion, they cease to being human is how the sane folks see them.


And Madness is the final recall
once in grace than comes the fall
a huge edifice shrinks becomes small
you find more such cases populated
freely gasping for breath on facebook wall
as a poet it it is a madness mall a rolling ball
impending fate the vanishing writing on the wall
god save the madpeople of india .. after all
aren't they human says it all...poetic madness
the final assault...the mind locked up in a vault

Madness Is The Refuge Of The Saintly

The Mad Woman of Bandra Station Road

The Mad Man Of Bandra


I passed him today, he was looking dazed .. and disoriented ,I looked at him gave him a tenner , first he did not want to accept it, I told him have tea, he took the note from me kept looking at it , I did not wait for his reaction I moved away.

Where he hangs around , no one bothers him , none are interested or know anything about him , who he is , nothing and he has been here since three years or more ..

The Mad Malangs of Ajmer



uptight angry
furiously
curiously
mad at
photographers
who shoot
them steal
their furtive
souls in
the market
square
at ajmer
pictures
are living
thoughts
they do not
want to share
with angry
glare they
tried very
hard to
scare
not realizing
the photographer
who shot them
is a dam madar
malang wont
be easily scared
into their eyes
he dared ..
had them
both ensnared

Two Malangs Of Mumbai

Two Malangs Of Mumbai by firoze shakir photographerno1

Nerjis And Me 
two street photographers 
bound to canon 7 D
we shoot what 
others dont see 
our pictures 

are poetry 

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