Marziyas World

Marziyas World, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

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The purse on her shoulders is part of her dresses USP.
In the purse she has Rs 10 but it is not for chocolates but to give to the Umbrella lady of Bandra Reclamation.,

The Umbrella Lady is a landmark , impoverished and her home is an umbrella the protection from harsh monsoonal weather and the vagaries and moodiness of heat and humidity if it does not rain.

Marziya knows her very well and insists I take her that way so she can give money to this poor lady.
She sits on the street corner next to the chai shop, some say she has a home near upmarket Dadar but how she came here living among the rubble no one knows and if she died nobody would care to know.


This is apathy on the soul of Humanity, and most of the time the Mumbaikar in the race to make a quick buck has lost all human feelings.


Who gives a damn, the media the conscience of society taps the homes of models who commit suicide or hound a stockbroker almost perpetrating his suicide too..

Death needs a motive death needs a man to punish , and it might be anyone's fault..for all you know.

You killed me could be the lines of an incomplete poem too before the storm hit the suicidal soul ,and plugged life out of the socket of Hope.

So at two and a half year Marziya has seen street life and shot it too..and because she is perceptive she reads the life I show her like a poet too.

Poetry of life gives soothing dimension to a subject like Death too.


Marziya walks home from school with me observing scenes observing people and she is an inbuilt camera herself.

She draws she colors all the blank pages of any book she finds save the walls of our home that are safe for the time being.


She has hung on my waist as I shot election rallies , a Sufi Sandal with body piercers at Bazar Road the Sandal was of Maulana Baba whose Shrine is behind the Bandra Sunni Jamma Masjid.

She has seen kids scourging their backs at Almeida Park in a Moharam juloos I sent her home when I was to shoot the hardcore sword Matam near Bandra Shia mosque on the same day.

She has visited most of the Ganpati Pandals Durga Pandals , St Peters Church and the Bandra Fish Market.

At the Fish market the koli fisher women speak to her in Marathi and call her Marziya Koli lovingly.


And without boasting about her achievements she knows the camera, the soul of the camera the feel of the camera.. without having attended any photography classes in Mumbai.


She knows the card slot in the camera , the memory card the card reader and pushing it in the port of my computer.


She does not know to swim but she knows the Nikon D 80..she has swum in the waters of photography with it since a very long time .

And I must not mention this but if you give her a knife she will slash her head to the chant of Ya Hussain Ya Hussain..

This comes with the territory of her Faith. and I have not shown her the Kama Matam as yet...not even visuals which is predominantly done by Shia guys during Moharam.