Ushering in Ramzan

Ushering in Ramzan, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

I meet her every time I pass this way, she just looks at me I move away , she knows I shoot her pictures but she says nothing to me , she is resigned to her fate as a beggar from Murshidabad in W Bengal on the back streets of Bandra.

She gets to eat from the houses in this lane, left overs or basi food as we call it kept in the frig but not eaten.

Her legs are swollen , she walks with the aid of a stick and begs near the bazar,

Ramzan is a lucrative month for beggars , money left over sairi or iftiari, and Ramzan our Holy Month of piety introspection spiritual reawakening booster is just round the bend it begins in a few days.

When fruit prices zoom you know Ramzan has begun.
All kinds of dates black brown wet dry will be available on hand carts, ready made falooda packets skull caps check scarves and the place you can feel this exuberance this intensity like a poem is near the Station Road Sunni mosque, JJ Colony lane , Lucky Hotel lane and at Bazar Road all in Bandra close to where I stay.

When you hear guys in tempo s blaring away for donations to rebuild the mosques madarsaas you know Ramzan has begun , most of them are white collared beggars with glib, and kids that run up and down buildings with fat donation books all this is reminder that Ramzan has come in on the wings of money too.


The most important reminder is the Chand Raat the sighting of the Moon ths is enjoyable at Bhendi Bazar Crawford Market and Pydhonie, and the hijras from Null Bazar come out with dholaks clapping their hands and demanding their pound of flesh.

The very first Roza you are awakened by the call of green clothed men , with a torch in hand a long stick to drive away barking dogs is the community of Awakeners

The kids love Ramzan, the elders too, the kids spent their nights playing carrom , gully cricket, and they are leniently loud but not lewd.
The typical quintessential eaves-teasing completely vanishes , the crooks the whores in red light areas take a religious break,

As I visit the hijras at Peela House during Ramzan to shoot them the atmosphere is charged with piety, reading of the scriptures , and in the same household called Hijra Cages the Hindu Hijras are busy with bringing in Lord Ganesha with pomp and splendor.

And in this little Ganesha temple of the Hijra prostitutes sparkles a huge American diamond that I had gifted to Lakshmi Guru , not to be mistaken with Laxmi Narayan Tripathi my hijra Guru from Thane.


This gift of the diamond and my barefet humility made the Peela house hijras and me friends for life.


The artis and the breaking of the fast is in mutual co existence depends on the timings and each respecting the other persons religious sensibilities.

So Ramzan is not just in homes mosques but in areas of ill repute too...and humanity is the core essence of religious and spiritual survival.

I would like to go to Ajmer during Ramzan Idd or a day before to shoot the ambiance there but I am deep down in muck of my bad luck that sticks to me like a curled dogs tail it wags it brags but does not straighten

Unlike you guys I take what falls on the plate of my destiny, and it is true I click pictures get clobbered because I write gibberish poems , and I am really shocked how could a person read them , and later criticize me because I am not at all pompous pedagogic even in my use of words is in sheer simplicity and I am poor in grammar and syntax.


I mean what is the using of building a Tower of Babel of literature and fine arts , this to a Keralite SOB when every morning you wipe your as with your hands and the shit hits the ceiling each each time you add a friend on Facebook.

So I come to a conclusion , we as Indians are the greatest enemy of our Indianness , we rape sodomize our own, we rob the country dry, we spare no one..at the end of the day we are hardly Indians we are just shadows of our genetic flaws and misconceptions.

So this is bog call it ravings of a sartorial saint or a sinner , the blog is nothing but emptying out of residue stuck in the throat of logic pretending to be a poem going from bad to verse.

For the visually handicapped it is words and for those who hate words it is a picture of a beggar woman counting her earnings she is collecting it to celebrate Idd with her distant relatives in Murshidabad.

And I hate Sundays as they groan moan in the pangs of giving birth to a Monday...