Happy Pateti. My Parsi Connection

When I was growing at Wodehouse Road I had no Muslim friends ,,my childhood friend was Keith Kanga half Bawa ..Rayo full Bawa .Dinshah Sanjana much of their sanguinity rubbed of on me .. they made me cheerful positive and hopeful ..without them I would have been a typical lungi clad skull cap miya ,, they pushed me beyond the frontiers of my fate and my parents played a large part in allowing to mix with everyone without blinkers ,, but the Parsis have been the very closest to me in this respect ..the beauty of their race they dont convert you to their religiosity , but they convert you to love their bawa cuisine , bawa girls loved me in college but the moment I told them my name was Firoze and not Phiroze and that I was a Muslim they dropped me like a bad potato in the Elphinstone canteen .. though I did not come from a rich family background they made my background rich.. by their values ethics and love.
My classmates at Private European school early 50s were Tanaz and Jimmy Nanavati kids of Rear Admiral Nanavati and Priya and Laila Kuruvilla daughters of Rose And Rear Admiral Kuruvilla ,, Many other Parsis came in my life ,, but the memories of the earliest ones has not been erased by age or time,,
They say Bawas are crazy but I guess their crazy creativity rubbed off on me and during our school days if you wanted to attract Bawas just clap outside Cusrow Baug and all the bawa heads would push out ,,,in seamless alignment ,, childhood was spent playing at Pandya Bagh and teenage years and tears at Cusrow Bagh ,,
And Mumbai is Apro Mumbai thanks to the Bawas ,,Long live Parsiana Long Live Bawas..and I was blessed by late Mr Rusi Karanjia my dad made his safari suits and than later I made them for him at Framroz Court .
Sal Mubarak..

I Shoot What Others Dont See

i shoot ugliness asleep
under the coverlet of
beauty .held captive
cosmically by cruel
fate to be or not to be
distorted dilemma on
the soul somnolent
humanity...eyes those
burning orbs blinkered
to see what they only
need to see ..time
with a beggars bowl
seeking charity ..

Wake Up Hindustan Times

Firoze Shakir @firozeshakir 7m7 minutes ago Mumbai, Maharashtra
@htTweets Your article on New Mumbai blogger is total bullshit do u take your readers to b as stupid as your writers

Firoze Shakir @firozeshakir 4m4 minutes ago Mumbai, Maharashtra
@htTweets once a snake always a snake a man who wants to disown his Indian citizenship for the evil ISIS ..to kill and rape shias yezdis

Firoze Shakir @firozeshakir 2m2 minutes ago Mumbai, Maharashtra
@htTweets overnight he has a change of heart and you are glorifying this change of heart..and I subscribe to your paper instead of DNA Times

Missing My Friend Deepak The Cloud Man ..

from bandra east
via plane via ferry
his travel plans
to shoot clouds
in andaman
leaving me
behind in a
vortex of my
 poetry
silent now
of all my 'rant
anthill minus
the ant ,,fired
by a lady cop'
for wearing shorts
shooting 69 independence
day without my pants ...
jai ho jai ho my chant

Mr Karnik Bandra Reclamation

Artistically at ease peacefully resplendent he was sitting on a bench with his friends at the MET Grounds Bandra Reclamation.. I was taking my walk but the photographer in me could not resist walking up to him and complimenting him on the splendor of his well sculpted face and asking him if I could take his picture on my camera phone HTC Desire 826,, As his friends sitting next to him knew me , he obliged and I shot him in the evening of of our 69 Independence Day,, I took three shots , and he saw the colored version I told him I would work on them at home..

And I love shooting senior citizens , they have seen more winters than me , their struggle hardships in their youthful days and now in their 80 s relaxing looking back at those days ,, as memories .

Most of these senior citizens are retired bureaucrats , and live around the MET Grounds , evenings are spent at the park, watching kids playing cricket and football or the other walkers joggers ..at the far end of the park maintained by MET is the iconic tennis courts ,, and one of the tennis court is a basketball court too..

I normally walk in the mornings play some tennis thanks to Coach Surendra Pawar , but sometimes if I am free I come and walk about 3 km in the evenings at the MET Grounds ..

Sundays is chaotic and boisterous with the entire park reverberating with filthy abuses by the skull caps playing cricket as though it is the last day on Earth.

Jesus At Bandra Bazar Road

This junction with the sizzling aroma of food from Jeff Caterers is the most traffucked place in Bandra , the road forks from here the road on the left entering Chapel road to exit towards Mount Carmel , the road on the right goes straight to Waroda Road a one way and the  right takes you out to Bandra Hill Road ..via St Peter Road via Baba Nagar which was my first workplace several years back..the road extreme right a no entry goes to Bandra Bazar Road via the Shia Mosque ,,from here you can go to Chapel road or Bandra Hill Road but you cant enter this road from Waroda Road or Chapel Road but the two wheelers and cyclists dont bother about road laws so in a way it gets jam packed with no traffic cops ,, and forced two way traffic,, tempos and trucks ,.

The Bandra Bazar is a market with half the road taken away by hawkers on  both sides of the roads , nothing was done to make stalls for them as they are here since three generations , Bhaiyyas and the Marathi Manoos ,, so the demolitions that take place once in a blue moon is total hogwash to appease the public ,, nothing else .,.as soon as the demolition squad goes after a few hours the guys are back in business after all it is these hawkers that got carried away by Acche Din and voted for Progress and Development and perhaps a Congress Free Bandra .. but nothing much has changed this 69 Independence day or those days  that came and left furtively ..this is one of the dirtiest filthiest area of Bandra , totally neglected , and the Municipal apathy will not change with the change of government or change of Municipal Commissioners ,,

I have lived her for about 25 years and I dont think this this area will change it may change once the regressive dumb CRZ rules are scrapped , than this Bandra Bazar area might see more towers and the vanishing of the East Indian ethos ,, times are changing families are expanding and Bandra too will have to grow vertically ,,

And Jesus watches silently since over 100 years he was installed here ,, as a custodian and sentinel protector of the poor hungry and the unfortunate too .. he was there be it the plague floods or other nature angry calamities ..

The Muslim Man

He is 75 year old , he has lived in Bandra for 55 years , he struggled , when this area was like a swamp..and I meet him reading the papers during my walks , I am very fond of him, he is a very soft spoken person , and does not mind my taking his pictures ,, he is very proud of his children in diverse fields , he educated them and set them in life .

He stays near the Sunni Bandra Reclamation mosque ,we got to know each other since Feb 2015 when I began walking seriously and rigorously.

He is a Sunni I am a Shia but it hardly matters we are both Muslims of Bandra we dont wear blinkers and we both see the world where we live in beyond sectarian difference ,,he reads the paper and sometimes does not even know I am shooting his picture , he has a very benevolent face , a face etched with lines traversing in subtlety , speaking silently of his migration from a village in UP to Mumbai and now a pucca Mumbaikar like me ,, and do you really have to be born in Bandra to be a Bandraite ,,his children , my grandchildren were born in Bandra is reason enough to be part of this canopy above our heads called Bandra .. sometimes even educated people can be as illiterate as the angootha chap on the road,,