The World is My Umbrella At Bandra Reclamation, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.
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I shot this yesterday and though I have uploaded it now , I housed all the earlier pictures of this strong willed lady as a set on Flickr.com this morning , adding some of them as links and pictures on Facebook.
I dont go overboard shooting her she is a stones throw from where I stay , but I shoot her on impulse , her story of survival is real and mind blowing , she has lived beneath an umbrella facing the seasons the wrath of the monsoons and now the anger of the sudden Mumbai chill ,,and she does not complain , she does not beg, she is not a beggar , she does not talk but people give her food money , means to continue with her singular battle in life with nature and the karmic wheel of her broken down body but all this has not caused a dent to her resilience she has faced it all the cloud burst , heavy showers under the spectrum of this umbrella.
And in a way I chronicle her struggle this nameless woman , who some say is connected to an affluent family , I have never asked her story , never will.
But I blog about her holistically showing you her life through running images of the marathon of her freedom struggle.. and though enslaved to a mound on the rocks she is free metaphorically , she frees me to edges me to move on without grumbling or whining for the semi darkness of my own life too.
The Umbrella lady of Bandra Reclamation sees life as it moves from the back lanes of Bandra Bazar to the main road leading out of Bandra, she has seen morchas, feasts festivals , the Hare Rama Kare Krishna Rath Yatra , she has seen Baba Siddiqui, she has seen and everyday sees Ashish Shelar moving up and down this road , she has seen Priya Dutt , Salman Khan , but has anyone really seen her , well that is not part of my the story of my blog..
You can only see if you are gifted with eyes too see , Marziya Shakir my 3 year old grand daughter sees her, has always seen her nudging me to give her a tenner she will take the money and hand it over too the lady with sheer respect and politeness , and call it charity or what you may, but a child of three is beyond all human virtues , good bad or ugly..
So what the Bandra Reclamation lady needs is rehabilitation , counseling and holistically human touch, I did tell Sister Christobel of Roses of Mother Theresa , but her van has yet to reach this side of Bandra.. this is a predominantly poor Muslim slum society too called Lal Mitti..
