The Girl in the Rajasthani Veil

The Girl in the Rajasthani Veil, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

We met on the bus at Surat , I had shot her in another bus at Ajmer highway , not knowing that our paths would cross.

And if you are as camera trigger happy as I am, it was a blessing in disguise shooting her candid without her male relatives or she being aware of it.


I could not be choosy I simply shot and maybe she was intuitively checkmating me with the furtive poetry of her sensuous personality.

And I will confess I saw her without the Niqab , she was very dark, sultry and there was no beauty on her face , he face was sculpted like any other womans face.


So I come to the premise that even the ugliest woman covered from head to toes looks beautiful in a Niqab.

And I come to another conclusion , man is a curious by nature and he hates what he cant see ,. hence the distrust of the veil or the niqab.

It hurts he ego not being able to see another mans wife , so invariably white man, not part of the religiosity of the veil , makes a huge hue and cry, burn the hijab, ban the hijab.. simply because he cannot visually breach the frontier of the veil.

I know hijras who wear the veil in public simply because they are very beautiful and their possessive lover is scared of sharing his lady love with anyone else.

So I shoot the veil to show you its charismatic pull on the hungry human soul.

And I write this as a gab of modesty without enunciating its inherent virtuosity as spiritual garb.


So the Rajasthani Veil was what I shot and surrendered my soul to its poetry.

And the camera became my pen lighting up a reality in all its spectral soliloquy.


And I never spoke to her at all- but than on the other hand without words she spoke volumes about her femininity her desires her emotions and her tryst with my fate ... on a moving bus from Surat to Mumbai.

I got of at Vasai. highway cutting short my dreams my reverie .. and she flew away on the wings of angels.