Once Upon A Time In Slumbai - No Dobara

Once Upon A Time In Slumbai - No Dobara, a photo by firoze shakir photographerno1 on Flickr.

This is a set of pictures I shot of life in the slums , mostly from the cab,and the sad part is you cannot shoot this again , or bring this back to life unless you are duplicating a film set ..as this entire stretch of illegal slums has been demolished , one day the tractors came along with the bulldozers and dreams died young..some may have got relocated , but it is worse than a natural disaster , and most of them slums were allowed to proliferate by the authorities themselves , when they came up no action was taken as allegedly money changed hands in the form of protection charges to the local hoodlums mafia and the cops and municipality...the corruption exists in the soul of our ethos and even a million Anna Hazares or Arvind Kejriwals can never remove it ..bribe is the essence of life lived on the edge..
I have documented a lot of these slums , I have documented fire in the slums at Behrampada Garib Nagar Bandra East .. and the Nargis Dutt slums recently.

When an extension is made in the slums , eveyone is paid , and everyone knows about it including the neighbors public..and corruption sadly is part of political patronage , most of the chamchas , supporters of local political bigwigs end up getting free housing perks for services rendered , the malaise extends to burning down slums to grab land and it is not part of my documentary or social agenda , I am a street photographer my genre is pain .. within and out .. but it saddens me nothing has changed in our country even after 67 years of Independence ..we are slaves even today , shackles on our souls and the saddest part is crime incest in the slums , the recent case of a grandfather raping his 3 and a half year old daughter hit me real hard .. where are we heading , living in cramped quarters , no privacy, adults young all living in a single room anything can happen..

I live close to slums and I shoot the upper layer of pain , happiness , I shoot their feasts , marriages ,and the pictures of the Arun Gawli stretch of slums near Byculla pains me , they have disappeared but a few strive to re build again , defiance is the key , and after losing it all what more can you lose.

There are a lot of slums Dharavi , and shooting it during the Ganesha festival , when hospitality is god , is the time to see how they host Lord Ganesha , in their tiny pigeon hole cubicles the love for this endearing deity , and the discipline required to host him is what dreams are made up of in Slumbai.Mumbai.

Mind you rich people live in slums too much happier than the middle class denizen in his flat or apartment and he lives happily comfortably and when a builder eyes his space , at times he strikes gold like the slum dwellers of Bharat Nagar in Bandra East who a few have bought houses worth more than a crore in Bandra West.. what more can I say..I am a picture man and a poet so long boring pretentious thesis is not me , but this explanation is nothing but an Introduction ..to the slums of Mumbai.