Friday, February 20, 2015

This Part Of The Bandra Talao Where Ragpickers Work



This is from the Bandra Station Road end and the path leads towards Bandra SV Road it is a very narrow path , mostly guys fish through the grill ..

Or you can fond some old guys feeding bread crumbs to the fish.

As for Fish I pity them in the dirty waters of the pond the slime that I shot a few days back I doubt if they could ever survive at this end.

I met one of the ear cleaners who works on my ears , he was grumbling he said he has been cleaning ears at the Bandra Talao for last 40 years and why is the Municipal official telling him to go back to the state from where he came .

He said defiantly even after the Bandra Talao reflection he will sit at the same spot ,,he was a very angry old man angry at being deprived of his means of earning Rs 20 for cleaning a pair of ears ..

I think we must the only country cleaning ears like this ,,

And I wondered about the pigeons they will be hit hard .. who will feed them where will they go and the man who sold pigeon feed and than bought two goats as people love feeding goats and people who feed animals birds fanatically religiously will not give a biscuit to a poor beggar child .

And this is human nature the cat lady will feed expensive fish to the cat but not a chapatti to a beggar lady down the road

And I think now in retrospection I  would rather shoot Dabbawalas .. I too am getting tired of shooting beggar kids they have become passe to photographically cliched ,,

And it is strange as I shoot open gutters at Boran Road where the two senior beggars of Bandra sit Khwajah Bhai and Jaffar Bhai they look at me quizzically ,, .boh asked me in unison Bhai Sab Theek Hai meaning Brother are you OK
Simply because I was not shooting them I had passed them for two days minding my step at Boran Road , trying not to fall in one of the open gutters.

And here I must remind you all I had fallen in a manhole during the rains many years ago at Chinchpokli road with my camera , the news was flashed in Mumbai Mirror ,, Beggar Poet Gone Down The Drain.

But I survived and so did my camera  and this was during a stormy flooded day at Bandra .


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