Firoze Shakir's unique blend of spirituality and street photography

Thanks to his former profession as a fashion designer Shakir was close to superstars like Rajesh KhannaOriginally a fashion designer Shakir rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty of Bollywood while working with Bada Saab a menrsquos wear brand that has outfitted actors like Rajesh Khanna and Kabir Bedi at the height of their stardom That was till the late 1980s when alcoholism got the better of himldquoThere is hardly a bar in Bandra I havenrsquot visited during that time Finally my wife took me to a psychiatrist who told me that in order to quit I would have to take up a passion that held the same sway over me as alcohol I was already dabbling in photography by this time and the very next day I went to shoot Gauri Visarjan processions the next day and something about the beauty of it all captured my heartrdquo Shakir who turns 60 in December tells middayAlthough he has learned from photography veterans like Professor B W Jatkar and K G Maheshwari Shakir says that his first teachers were news photographers Sitting in the living room of his modest Bandra home he rattles of a list of photojournalists most of whom are this writerrsquos friends from the news lensman communityldquoIrsquod check pictures published in newspapers and try to pick up tips from them Eventually I underwent a course at the Photographic Society of India but most photography at the time was in the studio or around travel For me however the streets held an irresistible charmrdquo says ShakirHe started by taking pictures of Muharram processions and uploading them to his Flickr account and also started attending Kumbh Melas to shoot Naga and Aghori sadhus One of them even adopted Shakir as his disciple ldquoI carried him on my shoulders to see his last Kumbh Mela in 2016 before he passed awayrdquo Shakir tells us as he tears up The same year he got ordained as a Sufi malang In 2005 Dr Glenn Losack a New Yorkbased psychiatrist got in touch with him saying that he wanted to witness a processionldquoHe flew down to India and I took him along with me to see that yearrsquos procession After that he expressed his wish to meet the leper community in India and so we went to Haji Malang in Kalyan where there used to be a colonyrdquo he saysHe narrates the story of Maria a blind leper who used to beg for alms on the streets of Kalyan Soon local drug addicts started stealing from her begging bowl and as a result she started using two bowls She would collect her alms in one bowl but transfer them to a second one hidden underneath every few minutes to keep her money safeWhile documenting their struggles Shakir came into contact with the hijra community and started photographing them as wellldquoI soon learned that certain elements were downloading their pictures from my Flickr page and using them to lure people into paying money for supposed trysts with commercial sex workers I disabled all downloading options on these pictures after that I also clicked actual sex workers and interacted with them Besides Irsquove witnessed attempts at pushing prepubescent daughters of Kashmiri beggars into the flesh trade because of their fair looks All those terms that became common later like trafficking and paedophilia Irsquove witnessed firsthandrdquo he saysThe years have not been kind on Shakir He underwent a bypass surgery at the same time that his son was affected by COVID 19 during the pandemic and is now confined to his house due to a leg ailment On the happier aside his daughter is married and his granddaughter is all set to travel abroad for studiesldquoPhotography teaches you responsibilityrdquo he concludes ldquoIrsquove stopped taking pictures of children if they have the potential to excite perverted minds Similarly I no longer take visually disturbing pictures of Muharram processions What I show the world is my responsibilityrdquo