The Pilgrims Outside Ajmer Station...At The Mercy Of Indian Railways, a photo by firoze shakir photographerno1 on Flickr.
And this is the same situation from one year to the next..waiting in the mornings , nights or in the hot blazing sun without a shade over their head .. and it will remain this way .. till one day Khwajah Garib Nawaz puts mercy in the souls of the Indian Railways and the apathetic Rajasthan State government .
I shoot these pictures every year to show you the Pilgrims Progress with no other agenda but hope that traveling to Ajmer Sharif will be subsidized for the poorest of the poor , for him Ajmer Sharif is Mecca Medina .and he would walk all the way to Mecca Medina if this world was a world without borders fences or boundaries.
Sadly there are hardly free dharamshalas or resting homes for the very poor lover of Garib Nawaz.
This documentary of my trip, my spiritual travelogue as a Dam Madar Malang is dedicated to the poorest of the poor ..I shot the beggars , the hopeless ,
The hijras transgender , pictures that I shot and not for public view , will never be seen by any of you.. I shoot the transgender for myself.. simply because my pictures have been blatantly stolen misused by Flickr members and all over cyberspace.
I shot the Chatti function of my host Peersaab Fakhru Miya Hujra No 6 .I am lucky to stay at his house and be treated like one of his family.
One of my greatest desire was to find the limbless boy, a young boy without hands I had shot him two years back, I could not find him last year , this time I met him, and prayed for his welfare,..
The beggars at Ajmer .. yes Ajmer is surely the Beggars Paradise .. his cup of gratification , both moneywise and spiritually..
I shot a thief caught by the public and the cops .. they come here to steal.. some get away some get caught by the cops or on camera.
I spent most of my spare time at Char Yar among the Dam Madar Malangs or with my hijra friends well wishers at Moti Katla.
And I felt alone as my Malang brother Marc De Clercq , was not there .. I missed his presence and so did the other Malangs too.
And so these are images .. some need text some become text...and this too is a long series...my train travel both ways was a nightmare .. but I shot the nightmare on the Ajmer Bandra Terminus Urus Special, these specials have no facilities , and are just for transport cattle , that is how Indian Railways treats pilgrims of Khwajah Garib Nawaz.... and you cant get tickets for the better trains..
