I must tell you in humility I don't search for pictures or elements that will bring forth a picture ..pictures seek me out ..cosmically .
I still believe the camera has one agenda it is too steal souls ..
I saw this guy when I take a turn from my house I walked passed ..and than came back I did small chat and while he was wondering I took two shots on my mobile and he is a new entrant to the help force a migrant working for the Bandra Shylock slumdog caterers.
They are paid poor wages but they get to stay in a dormitory type tenement they get free good.
I did not shoot his picture I entered his migrant soul I tried to change places with him after all my dad had come from Lucknow as a migrant lived in the swampy slums of Kurla adjoining a Hindu crematorium with his 15 year old wife and a child one year old me .
My dad struggled he had a lot of flaws but he was a smooth talker from Kurla he got a house on rent with the family of Nawab Kashmiri at Wodehouse road we stayed till the early 70s than he took us to Neelam Breach candy ..and finally back to Colaba Strand cinema .
My father mother have gone but they left us provided for ..and I squeezed the story of my dad a migrant ..why the fuck did he leave adab tehzeeb and Lucknow ..maybe he had foresight and whatever step he took as a runaway 15 year old it paid off Mohamed Shakir became Shakir Master .
Perhaps I search for my father when I shoot migrants ..and I must reiterate I hate Lucknow ..for me it is a prison cell ..
I cannot live in any city besides Mumbai and my parents are now part of Mumbai lying side by side at Rehmatabad Shia cemetery .
Earlier I visited their graves but not anymore I get morose and morbid ..I have a love and hate relationship with cemeteries ..I prefer the peace serenity of sea side Christian cemeteries .
And I have almost threatened my wife and children that I will come to haunt then if they bury me in a Shia cemetery .
I have requested them to give the remains my body parts to medicine so my eyes could live replacing the emptiness of a beggars dark sockets my heart my liver my spleen ..everything ..
I don't want a grave ..I don't want a corner stone begging again for a fatiah and I don't want to fuck 72 virgins ..not anymore .
And as I write this I am wondering whether I should go to play or not play tennis ..
I have been away from the tennis court for a very long time .
I think I will go ..move my lazy limpid ass..and I hate garbage too that I am forcefully made to shoot by the lord of the flies a part of him lives on the garbage dump of my soul.
Happy Morning from Bandra ..
