posted at Facebook
Over the years I have been shooting madpeople mostly those that came in with the winds , they stayed a while and I shot them..I took my chances shooting madpeople , madwomen with rocks in their hands ,madpeople who hated the camera more than me , and I shot their inner angry lonely wild angst..and later I decided to house them in a set at Flickr .. Madpeople of India .. madness has been in my family on my mothers side ,,but not a raving or loony madness but an individual one ,,creative crankiness and more .
During my travels I met mad monks , mad bawas , crazy fakirs , morbid malangs ..one minute a madperson was nice to me I offered him tea next moment without any emotion he took the glass of tea and threw it away abusing me cursing me calling ma mad man.. I realized there was something cosmic in both our madness , my madness of shooting mad people ,,I have had weird moments experience with madpeople , and the one madman I really miss lived on the roads at Bandra Bazar , he would never bathe, and than someone would give him a new pair of clothes which within a week became black as soot , he used to watch me , never spoke to me I was shit scared of him but I shot him , and one day like the other madpeople he disappeared too.
I shot abandoned mad kids a long time back, and most of these mad souls were left out given away for good ,,,There is a mad man I shot at Bhendi Bazar , and now they revere him as living Holy Saint and he is in terrible state , I shot him at the 100 Urus of Abdul Rehman Shah Baba Dongri.
I meet this guy lying on the street at Nehru Nagar Kurla East and this was the first time I walked up to him put some money in his hands and shot his picture , and while I looked into his eyes I think he was dead sure I was the mad one but than I did not have the balls or guts to give him my camera and ask him to shoot the spark of his madness in me.
I know guys like me wont ever be allowed in a madhouse , so I shot madpeople on the run.. running away in oxymoron haste away from their own fucked self..
Most of the madpeople I met at Dargahs like Meera Datar , and a lot at Hussain Tekri too.. perhaps this was more of a spiritual cosmic madness .. much different from Hazri.. where the spirit enters the human body and causes havoc.. I shot this extensively without adding it to my madpeople set at Flickr.
Only once at Hyderabad a madman had grabbed my throat from the back and would have strangled me had my friends from the Imambada not come to my aid.. yes I am scared of madpeople despite my moral bravado..
Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.
Mark Haddon
