Seeing them gather tomatoes other vegetables that were thrown in the dump, prawns and other edible items , items that they get free from this horrendously ugly garbage site and they will wash clean it and it will be a luxury for these dwellers on the streets..and it kills me ,,
I saw some women scavenging food today but there faces were visible to my camera and I did not shoot them I did not want to humiliate them.. and for a government busy with bans as political gimmick and appeasement that the poor have to scrounge for food from garbage bins ..can you imagine the desperateness , the stench the filth and searching for a few good leaves of vegetables a few smashed good tomatoes , and fish head ,, chicken parts anything that can be cooked and made as food.
And am I showing India in bad light ,, I am showing you reality truth of living , you in apartments living in air conditioned comfort so taken up by street photography wont feel the emotions of being hungry unless you are fasting to appease your god ,, but try once joining these women and pretend scouring for food and you will know the meaning of hunger and the narrow mindedness of your street shooting camera lens ,,I dont know if I would have the guts to shoot their video and than request them to take me to their house on the roads to see how they cook all this as the young children hungrily waiting to gulp it down.. I am now fed up of using my camera as a single frame shooter I want to shoot an entire story board cinematic ally ,,capture in the city of Mumbai the dimensional quirkiness of Hunger .
And I will shoot garbage of life as the poetry of Life till I die ,, there are times I want to renounce all this my camera go live in the mountains with the monks but than that would be an easy way out ,, becoming a fakir like Palanpur photographer of yore late AS Syed I think..
I dont have nature to seduce me photographically only garbage bins I dont have running streams only open gutters and so I shoot what is close at hand ,,I was at Worli Sea Face meeting a very important famous person and I had to wait a long time but I had no heart shooting the tetra pods silhouettes of people at the seaface .nor the Sea Link that I took after completing my work from Worli to Bandra ,, I was not interested in shooting all this I prefer to shoot Garbage and human scavengers searching for food where goats shit , dogs piddle rodents eat the stuff that these humans will gather to feed their kids and fuck this is happening in Amchi Mumbai not Sholapur Kolhapur or Sangli..
