My storyboard on this series of urchins beggar kids is known as Turner Road Traffic Signal kids but as I shot other kids at various traffic signal I bunched them up in this set ,,most of the Signals I shot besides Turner Road were St Michael Mahim Church signal main road end at times the Mori Road end.
Than Pamposh Linking Road Signal the same tribe like the kids in this picture and the Khar Telephone Exchange Signal here the adults , teenager from the same community , women beg as eunuchs I shot them too.
I shot the Turner Road Traffic Signals for a longer time , as my old workplace was off Waterfield Road and than after I left this place it was Bandra Bazar and Hill road that I shot .
But in 2011 for a few months I took up a corporate strait jacket job as a GM of a Fashion House and I was back again at Waterfield Road but by then the beggars had moved away including the eunuchs ..
And as I have to pass Waterfield Road to go to Juhu I do meet these old faces grown older at other traffic signals and they remember me ,, I was good to them , gave them money and did as much as I could .
And most of these kids just disappeared , they used to stay at a mound near Rang Sharda but they were thrown out from there because of drinking fights I mean the adults , defecating on the pavements ,, and all this was close to my house .
This community has two branches one sells flowers flags atc on our feast days and the other predominantly begs ,,and there is a beggar mafia it has to exist as the beggar kids are protected if caught they are bailed out by paying a fine of Rs 1200 .
Beggary will never leave Mumbai this is not like the garbage you remove , and again spills on the road as garbage is generated by the residents .. but beggars are human , if they dont rob steal they have to beg to make two ends meet ,, nobody will hire a beggar ..nobody not even the Muslim community will ever try to rehabilitate their members begging on the streets .
There are guys or even the parents who push the kids into child prostitution as money rules and there is no parental love love of money comes first .. and I have over the years seen young girls with children.
I still shoot beggars .. but the eunuchs that begged along with the kids at Turner Road have now moved to Pali Road near Sahiban Restaurant .
And I know the beggars like a dossier in my head the old faces the new faces ..
I would rather shoot beggars than shoot celebrity.. guess that is why my friends began calling me beggar poet , the poem came much later after shooting beggars .
And today I have blocked a very old friend from my life and from my timeline at Flickr Twitter Google Plus ,, a friendship that took place in 2007 too.. and I learnt racism will never ever go away it is a curse like begging..
