I dial 198 every day
your complaint has been booked your docket no is 8024..
i am a subscriber to a disease infected bandra reclamation telephone exchange
mr yadav just came and checked my line gone dead again
morning tea is never on time .. fuck the barwala
but i am not a woman
i have no time at all
i shoot pictures
from a distant
armored cab
i feel his pain
though i doubt
he feels his pain
he is doing a job
does not have
a mad insensitive
boss who will
mark him absent
for coming late to
work he does not
have chamchas of
the boss gunning
for his ass holding
up his increment
in short he says
fuck jobs fuck
all bosses
he is a happy
as much as
i am i beg with my
camera too
and fuck
i am my
own fucked
boss
i was her
time pass
that caught
her eye
silence
of a phone call
a swift goodbye
deleted doomed
she left me
on the road
crushed under
cosmic wheels
she let me die
an optical
illusion
neither his
nor mine
a poetic
pause
a cause
divine
a few
moments
of her
laughter
her mirth
he glee
now she
has become
invisible
her face
i cant see
miles
across
the oceans
she lies
from me
no more
part of
my lifes
poetry
deleted
doomed
to be or
not to be
beggar poet
photographer
per se
a power
puff bubble
imaginary
If anyone understands Mumbai better than anyone else it is eminent columnist Mr Ayaz Memon.. we once met outside my old shop , close to his Bandra house , that time I was taking baby steps from photography to blogging ..
And Mumbai is an enigma I say with pictures as I am not good with words and it is tough I type with one finger cant see without glasses and suffer from diminishing eyesight .. luckily I shoot pictures with my eyes closed I dont compose I dont follow the beaten path of fucked Renascence pompous assholes who fucked the vision and the visionary till Armageddon.
I would still be shooting pictures even if I did not have a camera, I was gifted with the humility of an observant eye and Dickens Balzac Dostoevsky made me a street photographer ..my favorite writer was George Gissing New Gru Street and all the wisdom I got was sitting with frends junkies homos at the archives of Elpihinstone College ..we were the washed out ones the brilliant ones like Malvika Sanghvi others sat across on the brightly lit benches acroos the doomed archives ...Eliot saved us.. to some extent and Ravi Saran and Dhiren Bhagat..
I miss both of them Ravi Saran it alleged was murdered his chopped up body thrown in a garbage chute.. and I miss my visits to his house at Metropolitan at Bandra Pali Hill.
Ravi and I visited the whorehouses too but Ravi ended up chatting with the same whores I was screwing we were young and this was one way out to becoming men.. and our friends those days were rowdy kids from Third Pasta lane ...
Too many memories I wish I had shot pictures then...
And now I am posting stuff shot in Mumbai and this includes pictures I shot on the streets , in the train and on my reaching Lucknow
I have a huge back log , so I deliberately stopped shooting pictures , and this year I have shot less pictures did not shoot Moharam in Mumbai save 6 Moharam at Kaisar Bagh Dongri, this I shot before leaving for Hyderabad.
In the Shiasm in India set I shot my house majlis Lucknow Chehlum.. I thought of going to Lucknow to shoot Athvi and the Chup Tazia and Eid e Zehra but I have some commitments that I had taken up as an assignment so I wont be able to make it , however hard I try.. I left my Kama dagger in Lucknow.
I had also thought of shooting Athvi in Mehmoodabad which happens later than the Athvi in Lucknow but that too wont happen.
I did not shoot the Urus of Fakruddin Shah Baba no time at all.. I did not take some other work I was offered this month as I will leave to shoot the Maha Kumbh.. and connect with a few of my foreigner friends ..my Naga Guru is waiting for me at Allahabad ..
Than there is Haji Malang Urus I am not sure about attending it I have already booked my tickets for the Ajmer Urus ..
My Malang brothers want me to visit Makhanpur but than wherever I go it is no less than a miracle.
So most of the time in Mumbai I shoot the same garbage dumps the same Bandra walls , the same Mahim walls and the demolished slums of Dagdi Chawl.. if Daddy Gawli was there perhaps the slums would still be breathing today.
