Yogendra Prabhu of Banganga

Yogendra Prabhu of Banganga, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

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Most of the photographers I have seen during the recently concluded Lalbgh Chya Raja procession near the gates of his pandal when he leaves for the seas are totally selfish and absolutely uncooperative , they wont even give you an opportunity of a hanging space , even if such space exists next to where they are shooting,

And yet the Lord provides photobloggers like me , we have no agenda , our pictures wont come on the first page of Hindustan Times but in sheer humility our pictures on Putru Paksha will reach the portals of the internet much before their picture is published the following day ..

Simply because the Lord knows our pictures are a message of peace hope and humanity we share the ethos and in my case being a Muslim blogger I showcase Hinduism as an altruistic form of a universal religiosity , a religiosity that has influenced me positively.

So when I met this young lad Ygendra Prabhu a local Banganga self taught photographer and saw his zeal , I took an instant liking to him, and he was dressed for the occasion.. I asked him to shoot my picture for rec'd and shot his too before I shot this one..

As I moved away he got on board the makeshift raft that the local boys were using to remove the ritual waste thrown into the Banganga Tank and the waste is immense in the form of floral tributes and the ritual leaves you see floating around.

The little boys are avid swimmers and they collect the dry leaves and the accumulated waste is thrown into bins placed at one end by the Municipality .

The raft has four steel poles and a plastic rope and is actually four large floats joined together to make a floating raft , a bamboo pole is used as oar for navigation or sometimes pu;;ed by a rope by the kids swimming in the water alongside the raft.

Yogendra was shooting pictures from this raft I called out to him to shoot a few pictures for me on my camera but he generously offered me to come on the raft and shoot pictures too and the media guy would have never shown such gesture us humility and help assistance is not in ther blood at all.. only they are Gods chosen one to shoot pictures , a story goes when God created the media photographer knowing their attitude he first created the newspaper than he created the Press Card and finally created Rajnikanth like photojournalists..to accommodate the soul of their Camera in the Universe..

Because of Rajnikanth like photojournalists he first created them before creating the Universe which has literally gone from Bad to Worse.

So this is my tribute to a fellow photographer Yogendra Prabhu , a person you would have not known , god wanted me to show you their humility their world and so God created the photo blogs before he created photobloggers like me.


I shoot all these pictures in this lot from the bobbling raft so some pictures are wobbly too , and this was risky as the raft is slippery with the accumulating waste it almost goes out of hand.

I got off the raft thanked Yogendra and the crew and I am sure I a got different feel to my pictures and my legs because of the wetness and being barefeet are in worse state than before.

But they will heal as you view my pictures my soul lives in the soul of my pictures too .