I started my schooling at Private European School near Usha Sadan and this was part of John The Baptist Methodist Church ..the Church was not as ornate as the Roman Catholic Church I was to get influenced later in life ..
The teachers who taught me were all English but never was there any reference to my being a Muslim in short there was no proselytizing ...here too I took up Bible studies for the few years I was part of this school .
Sunday's our Goan maid would dress us up and take us to St Francis Chapel opposite Miramar close to Hampton Court and my mother never objected to this at all..religion was not a hurdle at our house ....and a Shia house our Arabic teacher was a Sunni from the mosque at Colaba Bazar ..as far as I remember there were hardly any Shias at Wodehouse Road ..for our Shia feasts we had to go to Imamia at Bhendi Bazar .
After I left Private European School and joined Holy Name in 1963 it was my first Roman Catholic influence and it reached deep down into my psyche my friends my teachers were Christians and Paul my friend was an altar boy so was his father brother I got my first taste of wine too thanks to them .
My private thinking moments were spent at Holy Name Cathedral but at Jony Castle where we lived I was being bombarded brainwashed by reading Watch tower and the Bible of the Jheovahs Witness thanks to my childhood friend Keith Kangas grandma she hated all religion be it Hindu Catholics Buddhist or Parsi .
Rivers of milk and honey that is what she put in our heads ..and later while living at Keith's house during my SSC exam my parents were going through a lot of domestic problems mom ear sent to Lucknow with my other siblings Dad and one brother stayed at Mereweather Road on rent I lived with Keith Kanga it was here that I was conned taken to the sea off Badhwar Park to be baptized as a Jheovahs Witness but thanks to Allah it rained heavily and the baptism was kept for another day ...but my father took me away from Keith's house we got back our good days our mom returned and now only a memory remains .
So I was a whisker away from becoming a Christian ...if you can call the Jheovahs Witness Christian s ...as they considered every religion on earth besides their own as heretical.
So the Church has been my fascination I began shooting St Peter Church when I had my workplace at Baba Nagar .I spent most of my time here shooting Christmas Eve Mass New Year eve Mass Good Friday Easter Adoration Baptism Holy Communion births and deaths thanks to Fr Jaun Fr Lawrie I shoot the Loyola feast but the person who really connected me to Jesus and his backyard at Bandra was my dear friend Darryl Luke Loyola.
Without him I could have never shot St Peter Church and I shot St Theresa Church St Andrew Church Mount Mary St Anne Mount Carmel and Sacred Heart Khar .
Than I met Jo of the Cross began shooting Good Friday and 14 stations of the cross for many years .
Both my granddaughter s have been shooting St Peter's since they were 2 year old
St Peters Church has been my home in more ways than one poetically and cosmically .
And the Latin Mass I shoot every year ..here .
