A lone child stares blankly from a rectangular opening in the asbestos sheet, which passes off as a window for his first-floor shanty. There is nothing around him except more asbestos sheets rising vertically to form a full-scale multi-storey structure. With no place to play, the slums of Bandra are no place for children. Altamash Ansari, 13, from the Behrampada slum can’t articulate the things children face in these human coops. But his photograph of the idle child speaks volumes of their condition.
His work Mein khelna chahta hun (I want to play) is part of a series of photographs by children from Bandra’s slum communities, which are on display at an exhibition titled ‘My city through my eyes’. The two-day exhibition organised by the NGOs CRH (Committee for Right to Housing) and YUVA (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action) showcases works of children from Behrampada, Indiranagar, Garibnagar, Shastrinagar and Dnayneshwar Nagar.
“I love playgrounds, but wherever there is a playground, there is garbage,” says Altamash, a Class VI student, who lives in a Behrampada shanty.
Two photographs titled My playground , by 11-year-old Mohammad Zaid Ansari, show a child flying a kite from an asbestos rooftop and another staring at a garbage-lined ditch. The photos capture the everyday struggle with poverty and deprivation the children see around them.
Altamash’s photo, Mei kahin bhi kaam kar sakta hun (I can work anywhere) shows people engaged in work for sustenance. He shows a barber offering his service to a client on a pile of rubble or another man speaking on a phone outside a closed shutter of a coaching class.
“No one has any work. So when they want to work, they sit around like this,” explains Altamash. The children identified lack of water, fire risks and garbage as the main problems faced in the settlements.
Garbage — being burnt in the open, jamming nullahs, overflowing from dustbins, piled up outside houses — is a recurring feature in almost all the pictures.
Eighteen-year-old Indiranagar resident Sagar Nivrale is a student and also works as an office boy. His photographs of the Mithi river highlight the severe degradation of the water body.
Sarfaraz Shaikh (12), who clicked dirty ditches in one of the slum lanes, says: “I want to highlight the fact that people don’t throw trash in dustbins and it ends up in the gutters, spreading sickness.”
Sarfaraz feels images have the power to put the spotlight on the aspects of life that escape the naked eye. “People see this garbage every day, but they keep on walking without thinking much of it,” he says. Given a choice, he says he would love to capture people in the lanes. “The worry on their faces when there is no water, or when they fight and swear at each another or when you have to borrow water from someone.”
The artist in Sarfaraz offers a picture of the future he wishes for the people of his neighbourhood. His photograph of the lush open fields spread out in Bandra East show the possibility that “if Bandra can be like this, no one would fall sick and everybody would live in peace”.
The exhibition displays works of 21 children, trained by a freelance photographer engaged by YUVA. “The children were trained from December 15 to 25, 2015,” says Aravind Unni of YUVA. “Children realised that through photography, they will be able to tell stories of things which no one would notice, and which need to be shown to the people outside.”
