The Panwalas of Lalbagh

The Panwalas of Lalbagh, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

Now you know why I consider Lalbagh Cha Raja Gully the haven of street photography I shot shops peoples moments lived relived and I have begun my 19 fast of Ramzan all night Shia folks do Amal and the Martyrdom of Hazrat Ali is a sad for all of us.

And if somebody could murder the First Shia Imam and the Fourth Sunni Caliph in a mosque and get away with it thereby creating a precedence and a license to kill with impunity in Gods house and make home in heaven among 72 nubile virgins what would you term modern Jehad killings massacres suicide bombings and these are thought I have as I add my angst on the soul of a panwala a common man eking out a living at Lalbagh ..


I consider myself lucky having been born a Muslim in India where my cultural identity the pluralism of my surroundings having lived with Hindus and Christians Parsis Buddhists all my life made me what I am a human loving person.

So it hurts me to see the hate one Muslim has for another highly condemnable I have a few videos on Shiasm me cutting my head on Ashura and Chehlum and the bilious comments the Wahabbi adherents the Salafis and the Ahle Hadees lovers of insular Islam write on it makes me puke all over my shirt front.

Your hate your bigotry cannot change my upbringing my religious views or my Shia tradition and the hypocrisy on social networking sites everybody enjoys my pictures and the moment I post 21 Ramzan blood and gore matams scourging on my site at Flickr Facebook I will be castigated and thrashed cyberbullied ,

This is the flip side of being a barefeet Shia blogger of Mumbai.

A blogger needs pictures to blog his angst and here I do it on a picture of a pan the most integral part of my ancestry as a Lucknow born , Pan was part of Adab and Tehzeeb , the wife bought the pandan as her dowry I still have the metal one bought by my wife when she accidentally married me by a quirk of fate called the Istikhara.

My dad my my grand parents ate the pan , chewed it with relish and with etiquette unlike the quintessential pan chewing Maharashtrian counter part who spat on walls we had the Ugaldan and spat in this .

I never liked pan at all..it is considered an auspicious item at weddings and other poetic dos or mushairas.


My mom used to drag me as a little kid to buy pan in the wholesale market at Null Bazar and these are nostalgic moments I never forgot and those days my mother was a very vibrant force and now dead and gone I still consider her a vibrant force she was the force that makes me write what I write she taught us the greatest lesson she taught us Tolerance and those days our Bai whom we called Aiee was a an old Maharashtrian lady our maids were mostly Catholics from Goa and Mangalore .

We did have a Muslim cook who worked for Nawab Kashmiris family with us for a short while , we were their tenants and after they left Wodehoue Road Khatau Bhuvan he worked for us..like a family member.

And when Samiya was my daughter was born we kept a Marathi bai who is our next door neighbor now staying in a slum rehabilitation building.She still visits us at all major Hindu festivals..and our own too.

Only Marziya has had no servants she has been bought up by the Family., two and a half year old street photographer painter and creative artist waiting in the wings on the wings of time.

An a few pictures after this I will complete 140000 photo blogs at Flickr dedicated to all of you without you I would have not reached this far.

And Dr Glenn Losack MD my mentor because of whom you see all my pictures he paid for my Pro membership for two years.