You Can Only Shoot What You Are Destined To Shoot, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.
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Guess I am a fatalistic street photographer I believe pictures that I take are predestined .
I wont get picture by merely wishing for pictures.
When I was invited for this event by Raja the piercer I did not whether I would make it in the first place , I have been in a mental turmoil, and photography is not my main priority it is a passionate hobby within limits.
The other problem I have never been this place before so I waited for Raja to arrive but in the mean time I had made friends with the Tamil guys.
Than I spotted the hijras and that was enough to add impetus to the pictures I would shoot , shooting the Hijra from Nasik piercing his cheek with a 18 feet rod was my main intention now.
I did not miss a single frame of his piercing and I shoot close to Raja as he pierces the rod and he does the piercing smoothly sometimes the cheek muscle go stiff than force has to be applied to push the 18 feet rod.
Similarly with the hook piercing the back, the back is slapped several times to ease the muscles and the flesh and here three people are required to push the stubborn hook in , mostly the hook point is blunt and rusty too, that makes Raja go mad.
Butter is used on the points of the hooks and the rods.
Later a lot of hijras joined the procession that traverses from the Sai Baba temple where the piercing is down towards the main roads of Sion Koliwada and than comes back for the removal of the rods and hooks at the Maryamma temple known as Chellam.
This procession gets over pretty late so I aborted the shoot, I shoot all ritual stuff barefeet, and I moved away from here..
I was unfortunate being busy with the hijra piercing his cheek, I was unable to shoot the man who wears a contraption called Singapore Juggernaut , here thin rods enter his chest back and sides and he walks with this in the procession ./.
Also I shot a guy hung from his back on hooks on a pulley top of a industrial crane , from the sides this guy another guy hung with hooks too , both tied by ropes on the legs for safety.
And this is one memory card I have to upload another 400 pictures in this lot and another card about 2 GB .
This is one of my favorite rituals I shoot and there was an invitation for another one also at Sion Koliwada I skipped.
My net connection is slow and my uploading too.
