The Sufi aesthetic: Firoze Shakir's unique blend of spirituality and street photography

The colourfully dressed Firoze Shakir has spent the last two decades documenting religious sects and marginalised communities through the lens of his Canon 7D camera. Pic/Shadab Khan

Thanks to his former profession as a fashion designer, Shakir was close to superstars like Rajesh Khanna

Originally a fashion designer, Shakir rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty of Bollywood while working with Bada Saab, a men's 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 him.

"There is hardly a bar in Bandra I haven't 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 heart," Shakir, who turns 60 in December, tells mid-day.

Although 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 writer's friends from the news lensman community.

"I'd 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 charm," says Shakir.

He 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. "I carried him on my shoulders to see his last Kumbh Mela in 2016 before he passed away," Shakir tells us as he tears up. The same year, he got ordained as a Sufi malang.

In 2005, Dr Glenn Losack, a New York-based psychiatrist, got in touch with him, saying that he wanted to witness a procession.

"He flew down to India and I took him along with me to see that year's 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 colony," he says.

He 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 safe.

While documenting their struggles, Shakir came into contact with the hijra community, and started photographing them as well.

"I 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, I've 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, I've witnessed first-hand," he says.

The 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 studies.

"Photography teaches you responsibility," he concludes. "I've 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 responsibility."