Saturday, January 2, 2016

The essence of Bulawa or being called



Last few days I am trying to go to the Dargah of Holy Saint Makhdhoom Shah Baba to meet my Rifai friends at the Dhuni but somehow it just does not happen .
And I am not very far from Mahim I could take a cab and be there within a few minutes but the moment genuinely evades me work that I have taken up does not leave me and my poor health ever since I came back from Lucknow .
I pass by Hazrat Fakhruddin Shah Babas Dargah in the bus and I make a hurried wish asking for peace for all ..I want to meet the bawas selling gemstones on the roads meet some malangs but yet again it is love from a distance .
Most of my outings take me more towards Shastri Nagar Santa Cruz and Juhu .
I pass by Bandra Talao but no time to wish my dear friends the ear cleaners .
And I believe every moment in life is cosmically connected nothing happens accidentally or deliberately .
I use my mobile phone to blog my stray thoughts instead of the laptop and I blog first on Facebook than copy paste to Flickr .
I am not too excited to run to Twitter.
My congested chest cough and cold don't seem to leave me .
I wished most of my friends I had lost touch with on Whats Up.
I have no work that takes me to the slums in Bandra east or even Bandra Slaughter House compund .
I shoot randomly on my phone and the Muslim mother with her new born child begging at Shastri Nagar on New year's day hit me hard and this is a total Miya locality I gave her money bought her buns and gave her milk from the nagori shop while the old Miyas watched me curiously not saying a word of reprimand when I took her pictures .
So a few moments in life on the streets will never change .
I see pictures all the time happening in front of my eyes as though a greater god was showing me what my camera on its own would never be able to see and I walk away as the moment could not be held on my mobile phone .
What this year holds in its bosom I don't know and today is the second day and I have taken a resolve I will go to the Mahim Dargah in the evening .
Most of my working time has gone into a film work of precision detailing I took up for my favorite actor even in Lucknow I was busy sourcing stuff for this film.
And I will go to play tennis at 7.30 am ..meet Fabian Namory and the rest of my friends .

The Funny Part Of Life ,, They Will Feed Pigeons Dogs Cats But Never The Poor People



I shot this from a moving cab.. a limbless man on a box moving near the iconic place on Mahim main road where a provision store makes money selling grains bird feeds to the pigeons .

And over the years I have been shooting the Bandra Talao where people bring sack loads of grains to feed the pigeons and proud that they are doing a great deed .. but none will ever take out time to feed the poor on the roads and this is the satire of misplaced charity on the streets of Mumbai.

I lived at Colaba Strand cinema and early mornings drunks urchins picked up the chana at Gateway of India food for the pigeons from the Marwari Sethias ,, those days I did not have a camera only a camera eye.

I know rich fat ladies feeding biscuits to stray dogs at Carter Road Bandra  as the greedy urchins watch hungry in vain.. some of these do gooders just hate the poor with a vengeance ,, that is dangerously unhealthy,

I am a people photographer my cosmic camera eye misses nothing .. and it saddens me ,,the apathy neglect for the poor denizens on the streets .

The sense of genuine charity no more exists in the human hearts of Mumbai...and I am shocked sometimes when people give me money seeing me barefeet and think I am a beggar too a bawa who will pray for their libidinous wretched souls too.

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