The Drug Addict Of Bandra

The Drug Addict Of Bandra, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

They are totally hooked to gard brown sugar they sniff smoke and inject themselves .

They are denizens of a doomed destiny some of them come from good homes dont we all, but than got trapped on the way and every step pulled them in like whirlpool of no escape.

A friend of mine smoke to one of them and the gardalu as they are called in local language , now a scavenger from garbage dumps sells his stuff a bhangar joints told him, he cant give it up.

He spends over Rs 500 per day on this nasha , he steals clothes hanging out to dry , the jeans sarees bring him good money, he steals kids cycles sometime he steals their school bags too.

The one who spoke to my fiend was his childhood friend now a incorrigible druggie he told him he has never molested children but he sleeps with women who are in the trade or those hooked on gard like him.

His body is normally full of sores that dont heal and it gets worse than they go to the municipal hospital and if the disease is terminal they sleep outside the hospital but ironically in most cases they outlive death and are back on their feet back collecting saleable stuff from the garbage.

They work alone or in pairs , this place and a passage between two buildings on this lane is where they shoot poison into their systems.

The Lucky hotel signal is their adda or the dumps at Bandra reclamation a huge white gunny sack on their shoulders they go about their work stealthily silently.


If provoked they can be dangerous even the cops dont mess with the they keep a piece of blade in their mouth to resist arrest and cops dont want to get the stick for excess when the gardalu will cut himself and blame it on the beatings by the cop to the judge.

They move freely and their hallowed kingdom is the garbage this is their temple and pace of worship it sustains them.. they have no religion only the next shot the next high.

They have no siblings no parents no ancestry they have no names like you and me some call them gardalu junkie or charsi.

They live beneath the undergrowth of Mumbai life like rodents running from one dump to the other.