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This is an archive article published on April 22, 2014

Being the humans of Bombay

A photo-blog that captures stories of Mumbai’s residents is fast gaining popularity.

A paan vendor describes the change in his business over the years. The photo-blog is inspired by American photographer Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York.

As they walked into Happy Home and School for the Blind in Worli, Karishma Mehta and Siddharta Mukerji spotted a boy making his way to his next class. Mehta sensed something different about the boy and approached him for a photograph. The boy, visually-impaired, allowed his hands to trace the school’s walls to finds his favourite room where they could get “a better shot” of him. When they started chatting about his favourite subject, he brought out an acoustic guitar. He enthusiastically played his favourite tunes on the instrument, singing along. Barely two hours after the meeting, his picture was posted on Humans of Bombay, a photo-blog. The caption read: “Music fills you up with joy, it touches your soul. You’ll hear me on the radio one day.”

The photo-blog is inspired by American photographer Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York (HoNY), which he started in 2010. The idea was to roam a city’s streets and dig out the stories of its inhabitants. Mehta, an economics and business graduate from London, wanted to do something similar in Mumbai. She usually poses questions to interesting people she meets on the streets about their lives. Later, their answers  — at times sad, funny and hard-hitting — are uploaded with their photographs. Started in January, Humans of Bombay has nearly 40,000 followers on their Facebook page with more than 135 posts already.

“Initially, people were not open to a stranger photographing them. But I had the HoNY page open and showed them the format. They slowly warmed up to it,” she says. Mehta, however, never asks names of her subjects. “The idea is to keep the people unnamed, because they could be anyone,” she says. The pictures that go along with the posts add a charm of their own. Mukerji’s brief for the photos is clear: “Natural photos without any  frills,” explains Mukerji, who is a freelance photographer.

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Initially, Mehta chose simple questions. “Are you new to Bombay?”. “Have you ever been in love?”. “What is the craziest thing you have done?” The answers were cheerfully candid. One post read: “I shifted to Bombay only seven months ago. Don’t laugh, but one of the main reason I came here was because Marine Drive was on my bucket list.” A middle-aged Parsi man, an arm around his wife said, “On our first date, she was wearing flats instead of heels. I knew right then that this woman was both — caring and understanding. She didn’t want me to look too short”.

Soon Mehta and Mukerji got better at the job and the questions changed: “What has been your most painful struggle?”; “Which is your happiest memory?”; “Do you believe in God?”. When they get the questions right, people open up, Mehta says. “My happiest moment was finding myself. The more I started loving who I am, the more I found myself,” a post of a young man reads. Another says: “Mine (happiest moment) was when a non-verbal autistic child I had worked with throughout college said my name for the first time.” A woman smiles warmly into the camera: “I had a really fatal accident some years ago. My happiest moment was when I could walk again after.” A recent upload that received record hits is of a young woman wearing bright orange shorts. “I love the fact that I roam around in shorts in Bombay — that didn’t happen too often in Delhi,” she says.

The blog also tries to capture the city’s mood. A case in point, their post of two men in an embrace with their quote: “Decriminalise Section 377”, after the Supreme Court, in a ruling in December 2013 upheld the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Their latest posts are themed around the elections. In one, an old man, who has lost faith in the country’s politicians, says, “…India was better off under the British rule because people didn’t  have to overpay for basic things like food and commuting”.

Though the page is growing in popularity and reach, Mehta has bigger plans. “After we have about 5-6 lakh followers, we plan to publish a book with some favourites,” she says.

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“For that we need to collect more stories,” she says. The drive to keep working comes from the stories of struggle that people have to tell, struggles from which they have come out smiling. For instance, two days after the post of the visually-impaired boy, radio stations called her up to ask for his details. “They worked it out. He’ll be on air  this month,” says Mehta.

amruta.lakhe@expressindia.com

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