Kallol Datta's inspiration

On his own spaceship

Kallol Datta's inspiration

Chinki Sinha

Delhi, Kolkata

“I find shelter, in this way

Under cover, hide away
 ...

I still want to drown, whenever you leave


Please teach me gently, how to breathe

 ...” The XX

He wants to hide, run away, and smoke. He doesn't want to look them in the eye. He wishes for a non-interactive world, but then this is fashion fantasyland, and they want to get it – the foetuses, the bones, and the eccentricity of his shapes. Because Kallol Datta, in his abaya, and his granny sunglasses and an orange fan, is being hailed as “alternative, edgy, experimental, abstract” by the high and the mighty of the fashion world. They have called him the rule-breaker, the rebel, and even tagged him as “Lady Gaga” of Indian fashion, a reference he scoffs at.

“They just don't get me,” he says. “I don't have any design philosophy. I don't want to explain my work. I guard it. I keep it to myself. Else, it would be whoring it out.”

They must watch out for him. But he is elusive, reclusive. He wants to drown when they congregate around him – the fashion bloggers, the writers, everyone.

At the Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week that concluded in Delhi last week, Kallol , 28, conjured up the vision of the woman he had encountered while he sat smoking one September evening last year. He made her up in his mind. But she took a life of her own, wandering around, cutting up bodies, and being grotesque. In his latest collection called “Grotesque Nonsense”, she reappears. For a third time.

In the Nation of Suicide, among a bunch of women on the verge of doing something. There she was, as he saw her, sharpening knives, preparing tea in a ritual ceremony, almost in a trance.

And when they begin to do it, slicing their throats with the knives in a mass suicide gathering somewhere in Japan, the nameless woman watches. She stops. Then the apparition blurs, and he will have to wait till she reappears, and he will then know if cut herself up, or chose to live.

In the meantime, the models walked the ramp to the tune of The XX, a British band. Lyrics matter, and even before he started work on the collection, he had the song for the showcasing of it in his mind.

“I like lyrics. It has to be words,” he said.

They walk the “Kallol walk” - straight hands, measured steps, no swaying of hips, no smiles.

“Anger, give me anger,” he briefed them.

He introduced his collection with a hand-made insanity print – a man screaming.

“Losing my sanity was never part of the plan,” it says.

To the creator, the last few months were frustrating. He was chosen to do the grand finale at the Lakme Fashion Week, and he was angry with the negative vibes he got.

He got into fashion because he loved it.

“I didn't know I'd go psychotically crazy doing it,” he says. “There's a confort in depression and I believe it is important to create but I felt that comfort was getting snatched. This is why I have stopped doing press releases.”

After the show, two women came up to him. They cried as they saw the collection, and heard the lyrics.

“Why are you so sad? It all looked so sad,” they told him.

“I can understand why they cried. When I was watching Arjun Saluja's, I couldn't breathe. I was choking,” he says. “That is amazing. For clothes to elicit an emotional response.”

Eroguro, the Japanese concept that focuses on sexual corruption and decadence, and sexual acts devoid of romance, and has been used to refer to horror scenes and blood, is what inspired him. The literal translation of Eroguro would be “grotesque” which implies unnatural and malformed. But Kallol Datta is no stranger to such acts of daring. A collection that he called “Avant Garde Fuck” was inspired by the use of the term by designer fraternity, and a friend dared him to call his collection that. He did it. Never a conformist.

All he wants is to tell a story. Like every story, it has a million dimensions to it. He calls is “Grotesque Nonsense” to give a sense of security to those that find his work “malformed.”

“I also compliment my work but I lull them into believing that I see it as nonsense,” he says. “But there's more.”

Eroguro, which was an art movement in the early 19^th century in Japan was lost in translation as it reached the west as all things. They interpreted it as gory and erotica and ritualistic suicide practice. In his personal work, he has felt that it has been lost in translation.

“Before they have even seen my collection, they would term it as morbid. I don't care anymore. I don't think my work is political but it is my reaction to what is happening around me in terms of gender notions, conformity, and state-waged wars,” he says.

He was angry, an anger that was not violent but stemmed from frustrations.

“Then I turned around and said, fuck you bitches,” he says. “I am going to continue with my story.”

The story of a woman isolated in her loneliness, performing autopsies on dead bodies. Because nobody came to claim her, because nobody would care enough about the bodies strewn around.

Because some of us don't love. Because some of us don't find love, or know of love, and are abandoned, or spared that emotion.

Because only stories live on in the memory. You can copy everything, but you can't replicate the stories that someone made up in their heads. Because they belong to him.

It was evening, and he was about to begin work on his Autumn/Winter collection.

She was small, and had bad teeth.

“You know the kind where you have pain because you have cavities, and it is a state requiring a root canal,” he says.

Much of her is an abstract idea. She is 55, and when he first encountered her in his mind, she was wearing an ivory-colored kaftan and doing those autopsies.

An ex-naxal, she is dark, and has white-grey hair.

In the collection called X O X O that he showcased at Berlin, which took his deconstruction to a new level by putting hoodies in front of the dress, and took a stern take at “love” by rejecting the Valentine's Day heart shape for a biological shape. Here, he presented her to the world. Loveless, and forlorn. In fact, a small heart kicks a bigger heart as part of the prints. He said he got a lot of texts with the sign offs 'XOXO' and he was irritated. Most irritants find their way into his designs.

“Did you love?”

“Who wouldn't? I'd be a machine if I didn't,” he says. “But my creations are more like statements on politics, gender, society.”

Where most designers are trying to show the global Indian confident woman, a shining beacon as an inspiration, Kallol says he is inspired by the dark and the mysterious, the madness of life in general. In fact, his twitter account description used to read “breath of fresh darkness.” Subversive, and he takes his chances. He deconstructs, and creates with an imagination that is fertile with dreams, and in his memory, he retains games he played as a child, lyrics of songs, images at the airport toilets, and emotions.

It is all about relativity, he says. What appears to be the dark and morbid to the world could be perfectly normal to him, he explains.

Now, he changed the description to “heaviest Indian designer.”

“Because I am quite heavy,” he says.

While Indian fashion is still to graduate to fashion houses, and structure and form, he is one of the very few designers that are going against what they were taught in design schools like fashion forecast, which he hated. He thought it was an attempt to commercialise fashion, force people to wear certain kinds of clothes in order to look make them attain the “fashionista” tag.

He controls the scene because there is a story, and it needs to be told. Whether those who sit in the front rows get it, he wouldn't be bothered. Interpretations interest him. He would use oxfords or brouges but when he sees women wearing heels with his clothes, he is amused.

The woman who is roaming around, and emerges in different situations, is an abstract idea, a tag associated with him. He wouldn't name her. Not now. Let her be a mystery, and let her reveal herself when she does.

“I am building the plot,” he says. “Let's see. At the Lakme Fashion Week, where I made the models wear silver-grey hair, I taking the story forward. An austere gritty hard look, introducing this woman as the character.”

He took his potshots at the plastic looks that everyone seems to be going for. His creations are a reaction to photoshopped looks where the women look from another world, with perfect skin, and unusual heights and weights, and strutting around like swans.

Hence, the deconstruction bit.

This time around, he went for much longer and leaner forms. In the retail rack everybody was doing drape, and he was trying to do proportions so the clothes could fit anyone.

Perhaps one day he would write a book, he says. When he first started out with his work, he knew it would be criticized, gawked at, and not considered “cool.” He hates the terms “androgynous” although many have referred to his creations as such. But then, women have been wearing men's clothes forever now, he says.

He still gets surprised when women wear his clothes.

***

“Fuck the body. The body is a given,” he said. “I work with proportions.”

He was showing me the collections from his X O X O and Lakme Fashion Week's commissioned collection, which he didn't name at his house in Kolkata in Salt Lake neighborhood. He lives alone. There's a housekeeper to cook his meals and a driver. For days, he said, he could stay home, distanced from the vagaries of the world, and create, and let the emotions take over, and not be dissolved or corrupted. He reads, and drinks

And dreams. He hangs on to those. But they disappear. They are amorphous. But one had stayed. That dream put him on the map of the fashion world. Then, he was at Central St. Martin's in London.

He tells me the dream from memory.

The man, a classical pianist, was at the peak of his career, performing all over the world. One night, his body was modified, and he ended with a hump at the back, and an arm became much larger than the other. He couldn't perform, and he ended up in a circus where people came to get amused by his tragedy. A circus freak.

“You know like how we had in old times – the bearded lady, the three-breasted woman, and other circus freaks,” he says.

The dream refused to leave him. The pianist stayed put and manifested his mutant body in his collection.

“Initially, for the first two years, people were thinking what spaceship is this guy on. They thought I was doing to get attention,” he says, as he puffs away outside at the Wills India Fashion Week. “I know as of now that for every one person that loves my work, 10 people hate it. I think my clothes are far from being cool. Even when I see other designers, I feel they are so well-groomed. I wouldn't be bothered about what I am wearing.”

To those that have seen his work, the clothes appear to be malformed, and deconstructed. But more than anything, he views himself as a pattern-cutter, and mostly works with circles, and sews them. His first collection he cut and sewed himself. Sometimes when the tailors are unable to translate his vision, he takes over, sits down on the machine and starts sewing.

“Proportions are always set. They still forming a woman's body irrespective of her size. All my garments can be translated into XXS and US Size 20,” he says. “I wear them. I started wearing my creations in London because it empowered me. I don't do rouching and pleating. I am a great believer in not showing skin. Wraps make me feel secure. This bit is personal.”

Everything with him is personal.

“The big problem in fashion is when you bring about gender norms. They don't work in fashion. Half the men are wearing skinny jeans. Gender conformity doesn't work for me in fashion,” he says.

***

His world, his art is tattooed on his arms. There are three stars. One imperfect, but then those are concessions allowed to the human hand that does the marking with a vibrating needle. He says his body reacts to pain well. That he can sit through the sessions without the needle making him twitch his face.

“The moment I turned 21, I got my first tattoo - a Celtic sign for courage. I think at that point of time, I was living that kind of life. Courage was needed for what I chosen to do,” he says.

Or how he had chosen to live.

“I love being alone,” he says.

Out of the 12 that he has engraved on his arms, there are six from his collections – remission, X O X O, etc. There are sperms, there are the amputated legs and arms of male and female forms, his own reaction to gender conformity in society. Amputation is the result of landmines.

“The shoe print on your dress is based on roadkill,” he says.

When I had first bought the dress with bulging fronts, and shoe print, I didn't know what it meant. It intrigued me. When I managed to find him, I asked him.

“An 80-year old woman is the inspiration. She has sagging boobs. This is how she would look like,” he says.

“But the motifs?”

Sometimes, the motifs tell a parallel story, or at times they integrate with the story. Indians understand prints, and they don't get the structure, or the shape, he says.

***

Datta, whose label Kallol Datta 1955 has made people sit up and take notice of the bulging silhouettes and the madness of his motifs, was once a preppy young kid who wore Pierre Cardin pajamas that were monogrammed with his initials, and wore a side parting, and dressed in buttoned down shirts, dress pants and cardigans. Then began his tryst with sports. Oversized t-shirts took over, but the real drama started in high school where he said he didn't know how to deal with clothes. He'd cut the sleeves, or chop off the length, and that's where his own experiments with fashion began. He grew up in the Middle East and vacationed in Europe where his grandparents lived. He was in between two sisters, and because his elder sister studied classics, he would read from her list, and was a loner. When children his age would make jokes, and sneer, and laughed, he would sit in a corner and observe them trying to figure what made them laugh.

He was into sports. But more than anything, he would play games on his own. When everyone else was buying Ninja Turtles, he would go for magic games, and mull over the plots trying to figure who killed, and how.

“When I was in high school, I was the school prefect. I would get caught most number of times in not being in uniform. Those were the days of friendships and I had like 40 bands wrapped around my wrist. I'd color my hair purple, and only in high school, I started to figure I couldn't deal with clothes. I wanted to deal with them in my way so I'd cut them,” he says. “My parents were quite liberal as long as i didn't do anything that was harming my health.”

His mother used to do voice overs, and he would listen to her as she did the dubbings. He wanted to be a television anchor but he cursed so much he was afraid “fuck” would find its way on auto cue and he'd be a disaster on national television. So, he chose fashion. But almost missed his NIFT entrance examination in Bombay.

“I was horrible at drawing,” he says. “I walked into the examination hall with a ballpoint pen. No drawing pencils, nothing. Had to borrow from others.”

He made it. At the last checkpoint where they wanted him to do an installation with his initials, he said he had gum all over his hands, and while he walked out, he saw what he had made fall. Deconstruction.

At NIFT Calcutta, which he chose over NIFT Delhi, he was a rebel, who got into arguments, and hated going to the libraries and fashion forecasts. He would not conform to the rules of the world of fashion. First semester, he said, he managed somehow. Then he bunked classes except for those that a teacher – a frail, young woman – taught. She taught him pattern-cutting. She'd eventually become a friend and “handled his tantrums.” He would sit and vent out his frustrations, and she'd listen as he would smoke, and talk. He got suspended before he was to showcase his project at the end of the course.

They complained he was smoking and drinking. But what was the big deal about it. Everyone else was, too, he says. Maybe he did it while he was at work, downing a vodka shot, and smoking near the window discreetly. But then, it was an intense time, and this was when he experimented with pattern-cutting.

After graduating from NIFT, he went to Central St. Martin's in London where with a small portfolio of drawings, he made it to the list of those that had been selected to do a women's wear line. This was his “dream” project, humped backs, and bulging arms.

He returned to India, and went back to the familiar streets of Kolkata. This is where he would eventually set up his workshop.

He wanted to be away from the politics of fashion, isolate himself from the Delhi and Bombay fashion brigade, and immerse himself in his work. Because exile is important to create.

He was fascinated with his mother's taste in clothes. In fact, even his grandmothers. They'd wear kaftans they bought in Indonesia, and his mother would get uncut stones from all over, and string them into interesting jewelry. He would watch with awe, and later, the abaya appeared in his work. Anti-fashion, they'd call him. But anti-Christ too had its place in imagination and mythology.

***

He emerged from the rehearsals, hair tied in a tight bun, looking hassled. The show was about to begin, and he was using heels combined with oxfords for the first time. Besides, he was also showcasing his men's wear collection – a series of lose jackets, and pants with motifs. Everything white and black. Anger, seen in black and white. Red would have been an easy way out. So, he worked himself up in a frenzy, and worked with images of fetuses, bones, and skeletons, trying to project his state of mind.

“Give me white light,” he says.

“The walk is too strong,” the choreographer screams.

A male model rushed to the makeup artist who tried to get the look right. Kallol walked up to the mirror, then turned towards me, and did a swirl.

“Go to the show. I want you there,” he says.

And then it begins – an indulgence in anger, in grotesque. He emerges only for a few seconds, never walks up to where the paparazzi is stationed, or the fashion editors are measuring up the collections with their mascara'ed eyes, and disappears backstage.

At his stall, which he had refused to decorate like all others, people walk up to him to congratulate him on yet another stunning, intriguing collection. Because it in only when you don't understand, curiosity fills the being. They want to work with him, and he smiles.

A woman says she loved his motifs of mating snails that he did last season as part of Lakme's commissioned line where Kareena Kapoor walked as his showstopper.

Not that he wants to dress Bollywood. But a few celebrities are wearing his designs – Sonam Kapoor, Neha Dhupia, and Sameera Reddy.

“It is good if they are supporting a young designer,” he says. “Fern Mallis, the former director of the New York Fashion Week, wore one of my jackets to the White House. Can you believe that? Sometimes, I wonder why would people want to wear my clothes.”

There is no muse except for the woman or his attraction with everything dark. Because happiness can't exist in a void, it needs the dark, the mad to be emerge. So, he provides that.

There's a certain fascination with the number “55”. Because he is very close to his mother Meenakshi, he has tattooed her birth year on his arms.

His father, a banker, named him Kallol, which means sound of waves. At least, that's what he grew up believing, he says.

Within a month, he will start thinking of his next collection. For sometime, he wants to do installations because they are non-interactive in a way.

“At the end of the day, it is all about relativity. I have been asked the strangest questions. Like in this press conference, where a reporter asked me what was the chemistry between me and Rimzim Dadu because we have always shown together,” he says.

It is like the song he made his models walk to. The XX's Shelter.

“Because there's always that parallel line. While wanting something, you turn the other way. You keep walking,” he says.

With more than 50 fans he has collected over the years, and his kohl-lined eyes, and abayas that he wears, mocking everything, creating for the sake of art, and not for the sake of commercial success, he is walking the road less traveled.

“I was never the cool one. Nobody said they were dying to hang out with me. I guess if you keep doing what you are doing, then people realize it is cool that he is sticking to what he believes in,” he says.

“There is no perfection. Extravangant is pornography. That's what I said for one of my collections. Another one, in my early years said 'I am a budding celebrity - immaculate conception'. I probably thought then that I was on the brink of doing something great. I was like 'Oh, I am gonna rock it,” he says. “I know i am not saving lives but India is being shaped aesthetically and I am playing a part.”

In the meantime, he will continue with his story. The woman - he is waiting for her to come to him.

An escape, an anchor - Imitating Bollywood on the streets

I have always wondered what it would be like to hear "no" so many times a day when you beg at the traffic signals, or what it would be like to go hungry as you sniffed drugs to keep yourself away from breaking down. This wasn't meant to be an article but as we hung out with the street children, I figured that "happiness" is a construct we try to impose on others and judge their situation with respect to our situation. What I witnessed was a celebration of life, even though it was a painful existence, and the sheer joy of dancing. An edited version is in Open Magazine, which gave me a chance to explore this slice of life.



Chinki Sinha
Delhi, Bombay

You don't know what a boy like him is ought to do with himself. A piece of mirror, a little comb, and a memory full of notes from sitting in a dark theater, damp with years of neglect, the seats full of bedbugs. Imperial Cinema in Paharganj. A red decreipt building, which plays movies from the 1980s and 1990s, a tribute to the masala Bollywood films. This is where they come – the street children, and live their Bollywood moments, whistling, clapping, and dancing.

His eyes would brighten up as the hero beat up the bad guy. They'd well up with tears if
the love remained unrequited. He could spew out dialogues, complete with the circa from
films in conversations. In fact, he still speaks in Bollywood lingo – dialogues edited to suit
his context. In fact, they totally fit his situation. Sample this - “I was born to be a star.”
Shahrukh Khan at the IIFA awards in 2011.

He can hold his breath, modulate his voice and stammer like SRK.

Or this from Ready, a Salman Khan film.

“Zindagi Mein Teen Cheez Kabhi Underestimate Matt Karna I, ME & My Self,” Shekhar
repeats.

Even a few weeks ago, he was standing, oblivious of the others that perhaps were doing
the same, and shouting “maar sale ko, maar” as Suniel Shetty beat up the villain in film
Krishna.

You get involved. Don't you? Because in the other life as a street child, Bollywood is the
anchor, the teacher, and the escape. It is the “elsewhere realm.” Twelve years after he ran
away from his village in Bihar, Shekhar Sahni is still on the streets, figuring his way out.

At 24, Shekhar is a bit jaded. He has sunken eyes, hollow cheeks. Yet, his eyes burn bright.

“If nobody will give me a chance in Bollywood, I will give myself a chance,” he says. “I
used to say this when I was a tour guide with the Salaam Baalak Trust. I still believe in it.”

He is lean, and dark, and short. But hope can conquer everything. Even insecurities about
how one looks. For in the world of Bollywood, anything can happen. It is a magical world,
he says.

Back in those days, he carried a tube of Fair and Lovely, a face cream that promised
fairness, in his pockets, and would rub it through the day. At the time he was in the National
School of Drama's summer school. They said he would make a great actor. He was flying
high. Nothing would hold him down. Not even the vagaries of life.

It didn't start in NSD – the acting bug. His first film that he watched at a theater was Salman
Khan starrer Hum Aapke Hai Kaun. Javed and him had got on to the train to get to the
nearest town – Sultanganj – where the talkies were playing the film.

Later, when he came to Delhi as a runaway child, he spotted a tattoo artist at a market, and
got 'Prem', Salman Khan's adopted name for many characters he played in Bollywood, on
his arms. Later, when he turned into a Shahrukh Khan fan, he'd wear full-sleeved shirts to
hide the mark that spoke of his love for Salman Khan.

Before Salman, there was Ajay Devgan, whose Phool Aur Kaante that released in 1991he
watched on Doordarshan, and started styling his hair after Devgan, parting it on the extreme
left side, and on Saturdays when his school teacher Sharma Ji would ask him to sing a song
for the Antakshri class, he'd go full throttle with “Maine pyar tumhi se kiya hai ...”

Hand on where Bollywood said the heart resided – right side of the chest – and wind in his
hair, he'd sing the song for the girls in his class, too.

While the drugs have wrecked his body, his spirit has remained untouched. As he tries to
redeem himself, face the world that believed in him, and then gave up on him as he turned
into an addict, he has a plan. With the little money that has saved from his delivery boy
job at Flipkart, he wants to go to Goa, work there in the holiday season, and study tourism
management, and when he is not so poor, he will act again, and if Bollywood won't give
him a chance, he will make his own film, and that's how the release will come. Of the pent
up desires, of years of acting in front of the mirror, and repeating dialogues in that dark,
damp theater.
Shekhar's story is not of a miserable childhood, hardly worth its while in a set of narratives
full of tales of abuse.

Twelve years have passed since that night when they decided that nothing but absolute
freedom would be worth their while. While Javed Mohammed found love, and left for
United States with his American wife, Shekhar couldn't give up on Bollywood, or drugs for
that matter. He was the performer. But he fell through the cracks. Like many others, who
dedicated their runaway lives to the magic of Bollywood.

So when Dedh Footiya asks Shekhar to dance, he refuses. Not until he has conquered his
demons. Not until he has come out of the shadows.

“Footage kha raha hai.”

Dedh Footiya stood up, awkwardly eyeing the others that had gathered around him, rushed
inside the tin shed, and emerged with a cell phone, and white ear phones, a bandana
readjusted around his head. He stepped on to the pathway that ran across the park, and the
crowd stepped downstairs on the patches of grass.

Silence and bated breaths.

Aakash plugged in the ear phones, and pressed play button.

And to give the audience a cue, he started singing.

“Aai pyar ki rut bri suhani, tu darna na o’ meri rani …” from Kaho Na Pyar Hai, Hrithik
Roshan’s debut film in 2000.

When the others take on the cue, he stops, and dances, copying the moves of the star from
memory, even the expressions. He doesn’t look anyone in the eyes, but conjures the set
from what he had seen years ago, and perfected over the years dancing alone, in front of the
mirror.

There’s competition. In the twilight hours, the park near the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara
becomes a stage where the street children who live in the shelter homes run by a couple of
NGOs here, pay homage to Bollywood.
Praveen follows.

“Body ke andar automatic jhatka,” he explains. “Bollywood jhatka.”

Others join in.

In the other corner, 10-year-old Vishal wears patent leather shoes, several sizes bigger than
his, and does tap dancing.

Then, when is done proving himself as a dancer he sings.

“Jab Lagawelu Tu Lipstick, hila La Ara District, Jila Top Lage Lu,” a popular Bhojpuri
Song.

All of them live together in a park, in tin sheds that an NGO has set up as shelter homes
for those that have nowhere to go. In one corner, homeless women live. They, too, are
crouching under the tree and watching the boys perform, for the evenings would be dreary if
not for such things. A little girl Pooja is watching from a distance, and she walks over, and
after she has smiled through her crooked tooth, she begins dancing, too. Celebration of life,
a way to overcome hunger, fear, and loss of home.

Shekhar only watches. Later, he tells Dedh Footiya's story.

His mother passed away at an early age, and his father was an alcoholic. He dropped out of
school, and ended in this park.

“I want to be someone. Zindagi toh ek aag ka dariya hai, aur ise paar karna hai. Everyone
wants to be a hero. But those are dreams. Talent is a must,” Dedh Footiya, the performer,
says.

He is 18, and likes Hrithik Roshan, whose moves he has memorised from watching his films
many times over.

Even his mobile phone, which has no connection, he uses to store songs. He is a serious
man, and isn't used to talking much unlike Praveen, who narrates his own tale of survival
against odds. He ran away from home, was taken to a juvenile home in Haryana at eight
years, and later shifted to Delhi in 2005.

“Maa ki dua door tak kheech kar le jati hai,” he says. “I ran away, came looking for my
mother, but I had tasted freedom. Couldn't stay at home. Wanted to be an actor but didn't
know how. Started doing drugs. Ab daba ke nasha karta hoon, aur dance karta hoon.”

And there are others like a shy young boy, who has no hands, and kind eyes.

“Mera na ghar hai, na baar,” he says, as he walks away from the crowd to take a seat under
the tree.

Or a man who calls himself Brigadier Suraj Pratap Singh. He walks on crutches. At 29, he
looks much older than his age. Street life can do this to you, he says.

“I have a dream. I want to make a film on disabled people like Dosti,” he says.

Rajshri Productions' 1964 film Dosti tells the story of a blind boy and his crippled friend.

Singh, who is originally from Patna, wants to do a remake of the film. In colour, Maybe act
in it, too.

“In this world, we are the rejects,” he says, looking at the ground, where his two feet would
have been. “But in the world of films, there's space for everyone. We can all be heroes.”

“Dilli dilwalon ki,” a man shouts. “Yahan style ke liye aate hai. Then we turn to Bombay,
that brutal city where we will walk on the fire. We will be tested.”

“You know I have a plan,” Anurag says. “Let me tell you about it.”

Anurag is a first-rate pickpocket, has spent time in Tihar jail, and other prisons, but wants to
be a Bollywood star.

“I will go to Dadar railway station, then take a taxi from there. It will cost me Rs. 25 to
Mumba Devi, and after I have paid homage, I will return to the station. Either I will become
the hero, or a pickpocket,” he says. “Those are the only two things I know. Why station?
Because that's the most familiar.”

***

Those were the “elsewhere realm” days.

Back in those days, they'd sit through the nights, facing a white bed sheet, hung on poles,
streaming B grade Bollywood films, and watch with gaping mouths the car chases, the
awesome vamps, and the coy actresses. The irresistible hero, who'd beat anyone to pulp,
who inspired hope against the bad in the world, and that the good will prevail. Somehow,
anyhow. There was no other way out.

They'd cry, and laugh. Movies made them.

Delhi Powerhouse. In those days, they'd pay Rs. 10 for a bunch of films, and sprawled on
the mud and patches of grass, under patches of clear night skies, those were heady nights,

and Shekhar Sahni and other street kids cheered, leered, and often through broken teeth,
they'd repeat the dialogues.
From the pocket, they'd dig a broken piece of mirror, and while they went on about their
daily drudgeries, their faces greased with dirt, they'd sneak a peak at their reflection, adjust
their hair, and later, would stand at the ticket counter of Imperial Cinema in Paharganj
for yet another movie marathon. The wooden seats from another world, and ridden with
bugs, and the fans whirring overhead, and an old popcorn counter. Posters from movies of
yesteryears.

In the evenings, they would sit on the corrugated iron roofs, their home, and enact the
scenes, muttering dialogues, smoking cigarettes, and sniffing whitener, forcing themselves
into yet another “elsewhere.” Then, sleep takes over before the morning train arrives and
they clamber down the poles yet again.

Shakeel, Salman, Krishna, Vijay, Arjun, and Aakash. Runaways. Street children now.
Ragpickers, gang members, and Bollywood afficiandoes.

Platform No. 7. New Delhi railway station.

They crawled down the iron columns like monkeys. A few stationed themselves up on the
beams, smiling and waving.

“Duniya mein aaye ho to dosto mauj karo,” Salman says, as he walks towards the coach. A
standing train, and a bunch of them inside. Taking a break before the next train arrives so
they can claim their coaches, and comb them for anything that they can sell – plastic bottles,
aluminium foil, and if they are lucky, something they can take home to the roofs, where
they climb to every night, and sleep in peace. Of course the police know, but that's hardly an
issue. Money changes hands, and money can buy a night's sleep.

Salman, they say, never wears a shirt. Not after he saw Salman Khan showing off his toned
body in the movies he had watched at the Imperial Cinemas. He took on the name, and
walks around with a shirt in his hand, his lean chest, and flat stomach exposed.

There was a time when Tere Naam released that many of these got their hair styled like
Salman Khan. Long, with a middle parting. Intense. They had watched the film many times
over, watched the actor closely for mimicking him later. The police could identify them
easily. They were rounded up, brought to the Salaam Baalak centre at the station to be
reformed, and rehabilitated. But they had chosen freedom over everything else. Education,
and mannerisms, and the knowledge of the world would come from the cinemas. They had
seen Jackie Chan, and swore by his martial arts, and Salman did a somersault or two to
prove the point.

But beyond the smiles, there are the stories of abuse, and deprivation. There is also the spirit
of the child to break free, and take life head on, choosing to brave the circumstances rather
than stay at home, and suffer abuses in most cases, or just letting the dreams take over,
freedom overpowering everything else.

Many ran away from home to be Bollywood stars, for they believed the roles that Amitabh
Bachchan essayed on the screen in movies where he was the quintessential man of the

streets, brought up in the company of all dogs, and all sorts of men, living under the
footpath lights, and then making it out of that world, avenging everything, and chasing
absolute freedom. But freedom from desires? That's another story.

Runaway children. They stuck together, found others, picked trash, watched films, and
found freedom.

Blame it on the television. When he was young, Shekhar's uncle would take him to the
neighbor's house to watch Mahabharat. He'd stick around for the evening feature film, and
then when the village slept, and dogs barked on its streets, he'd sneak into the neighbor's
house, and watch the 9 pm films on Sunday. They didn't own a television set. When he was
11 years old, he'd hop on to the train and go to the nearest town – Sultanganj – and watch
matinee shows with Javed and other boys. By then, Shekhar had strayed. He bunked school,
gambled, and smoked bidis in the fields with other boys. A doting mother, a pious lady, and
a hardworking father, and siblings, and a comfortable childhood weren't enough to hold him
back. He ran away one day, and for six months battled the tough life on New Delhi railway
station before he was rescued by the staff of Salaam Baalak Trust, an NGO that works with
street children.

He fell in love with a girl from Scotland who had come for one of the walks. He didn't know
why he was so crazy about her. They'd meet in the parks, they'd talk about life, and he'd
love watching her laughter. He even wrote poems, inspired by Bollywood.

"jo chaha use is dil ne mere ... kya woh bhi mujhe chahegi. hai is intezar mujhe us din ka, na
jane woh din kab aayega
jo dekha khwab kabhi tha maine, kya woh poori ho payegi
ya chahat ki barsaat se pehle woh mujhse juda ho jayegi ..."

But like the underdog, he kept the letters with him. The girl left.

“I said no to an internship because I wanted to be an actor and spent all my time doing
plays,” he said. “Of course I didn't have the looks. I wasn't fair or tall. But I knew I could
make people cry. Now, I think I can make them laugh.”

He has already written a script. The story of a street child, the life he knows best. A girl,
who runs away, lands in Delhi, and her journey.

“I am thinking whether I should play the character of a pimp, or the brothel owner,” he says.

The friend he ran away with went on to live what they call a “dream life” in America. An
american girl fell in love with Javed, and married him. Shekhar liked her, too, but sacrificed
his love to see his friend happy. Bollywood style, he says.

“Every friday he would see a movie. He would work hard for the money to buy the tickets.
At the Plaza theater, they wouldn't let him in, they'd abuse Shekhar, but he would get pirated
DVDs and watch, or go to Imperial Cinema and see the films. But his dreams shattered and
he got addicted to drugs. Salaam Baalak gave him many chances but he was a lost case,”
Javed says. “He would wear a red bandana like Shahrukh Khan in Ram Jaane, and because
he wanted to be an actor so bad, it ruined him. He said no to everything that came along his

way. He just wanted to act.”

***

A dream does not die on its own but is killed by the choices one makes in real lives.
Shekhar hit the wall, and then after the fall, began the task of redeeming himself. Addiction
is a difficult habit to kick. He quit, and went back to it. When you fail, you want a flight of
fantasy, he says.

“Have you been to the Khalsa restaurant?” Anurag asks.

“Where is it?”

The langar at the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, he says. That's where they go to eat, and then
come back to the park. They work odd jobs, but because they have missed out on formal
education, and have been branded as street kids, they are unable to find jobs that can pay
them enough to rent an apartment, and move ahead.

Salaam Balak Trust, a non-profit set up from the proceeds of the 1988 highly-acclaimed
film Salaam Bombay, which chronicles the lives of street children, made by Mira Nair,
has been working with the street children for decades, rescuing them, and rehabilitating
them. Since then, many other NGOs have come up, and they have set up shelter homes for
children to stay, and provide them with training and education. While earlier, the children
in these shelters were not required to stay indoors as the staff understood that these were
children who had chosen freedom over everything and if they tried to rein them in, they
would run away, the regulations now require them to report the children to the police and
if a child goes missing, the onus is on them. Hence, the children live in cramped shelters,
watch television, and learn their alphabets from volunteers from other countries who are
regulars at the SBT.

But these shelter homes are only until the child has not attained 18 years, after which he
is required to leave and find an alternative arrangement or join other shelters like the ones
run by Prayas in this park, a shed and a few water tanks and portable toilets. This is what
Anurag refers to as half-way rehabilitation, where they aren't at an age where they can make
it on their own. Sometimes, they work with the SBT as their staff, but there are only a few
such options. In some cases, they extend the time by a few months. They are given three-
months stipend after they have left the shelter homes, and in this period, they are expected
to find work. The NGO tries to help with the rehabilitation but not everyone can find a foot
in the door.

SBT runs a few 24-hour full care shelters for children, with one devoted to girl children in
Mumbai, Delhi and Bhubneshwar. There are several contact points near the railway stations
where children can get a meal and first aid, and can watch television, or just lie down.

But not all stay, or are convinced to join the shelter homes for they resist the confinement.
Like Aakash, or Salman. They'd rather not trade in their lifestyle for the promises of
education for in their limited time, they know enough to tell you that only the privileged can
find success because they are used to it, because success has a cost. The rest of them get by.

And if you have to get by, they'd rather do it on their terms.

A young filmmaker, who spent months with Shekhar and two others trying to understand
their lives, made a film called Badal Gaye Hum as part of his college project. Aatish Dabral
says he could only describe the lives of street children in these words “Each of them is the
hero in his own story.”

“I was very intrigued by them,” he says. “If you come from a different world, you are either
intrigued or you develop nonchalance towards such parallel lives.”

He met Shekhar, Javed during his college days. The film is about street children and their
lives.

“That's when I got to see their involvement with films,” he says. “In one of the scenes,
there's a voiceover that says 'Hamari jinadgi mein problems toh bhut hai par in teen ghanto
mein, jab film chalti, hum kho jate hai.”

When he screened the movie for them, they clapped, and Shekhar danced. It is one thing to
see themselves as heroes in their head, it is another to see it on a screen.

“Shekhar was the one who kept the piece of broken mirror,” he says. “He was the one who
should have made it. I still want him to.”

***

The camera missed him, but he ran. In that frenzied state, he realized he would need more
than just speed. There was a lot of catching up to do.

Rafiq Sheikh started riding horses. At the Chowpati Beach in Bombay, and worked out
at a second grade gym to get his body in shape. He tried learning English, and practised
dancing. But at the auditions, and he went to many, he got rejected. He'd curse his stars,
and everything else. But kept at it. At more than 6 feet, he says he can beat Salman Khan in
terms of screen presence.

“Give me a chance and I will prove it,” he says.

He came to the Mumbai Central Station years ago. His father married a Bangladeshi
migrant Zarina after his mother passed away. When he died of a heartache and too much
alcohol, she kicked them out. At the time, they lived in Rajgadh. Like Amitabh Bachchan
in Khuddar, he brought his two siblings to the Bombay Central and started working as a
coolie, learning the ways of the street life, battling the odds, and sleeping in the yards, in the
same spot where Salman Khan waited for Kareena Kapoor in Bodyguard.

“That used to be my spot,” he says.

Rafiq is 31, and is married now. But what he has chased for years, and lived for, he isn't
ready to give up. He still goes for auditions, and still harbours his Bollywood dreams. One
chance, he says.

“My father also was a big Bollywood fan. He used to tell me after watching Khuddar that
one son I will make a police inspector, and the other, a thief,” he says. “I was the one he had
planned on making a cop.”

But those were conversations under the sky, in a small hut, an alcoholic father, a depressed
man, telling his son his plans for them. Without much reference to the potential of life,
Bollywood had become the station of their dreams.

At the coffee house at Bombay Central, he introduces his friend Ram Naresh.

“We are like Dharmendra and Amitabh in Ram Balram,” he says.

The two had met years ago as children trying to survive on the streets of Bombay. They'd
watch at least two films a day in the Pila Haus area.

“The tickets were cheap and there were these old world talkies where we'd go and watch
the films,” Ram says. “Sometimes, we went to the Goregaon film city, a regular hangout for
street kids. In those days, they'd let us on the sets and we'd jostle to get on the camera.”

Most of the money they made, they spent on tickets for the films. On hot, humid days,
they'd sleep in their seats under the fans, while the actors played their parts on the screen.

“Whatever we have learned, we have learned from the movies,” Ram says.

While Ram wanted to be a cameraman, and always stood behind those who manned the
camera, studying angles, and claims that by looking at a shot, he can tell where the camera
was poised, Rafiq wanted to be on the camera.

“They used to say I looked like Akshay Kumar,” he says. “I hunted for those pointed shoes,
and used to wear them for our trips to the film city.”

They both remember their first film together at the Metro Cinema.

“We were wearing chaddis, and were dirty. But we had the fire in our bellies, and out of
the Rs. 10 that we earned picking up bottles at the station, we spent Rs. 8 on tickets,” Rafiq
says.

They figured that since they had skipped school altogether, the films could be their teacher.
So, they imitated the reel life.

When they were rescued by an NGO Childline India Foundation, where he still volunteers,
they had been invited to the Oberoi Hotel rooftop for an event.

“We wore chappals,” he says. “The invite said “formal dress” but we were confident. We
had learned to talk like big people from the movies and we were actors, we could imitate
anything. So, a lot of people were surprised that we were street children.”

Rafiq had gone for an audition with Karan Johar, the director who made romantic films and
shot the scenes in exotic locales. His stars were big ticket actors like Shahrukh Khan and
Salman Khan.

“He said I wasn't fit for the role,” Rafiq says. “It was a small role but I was so angry. I said
you give ten takes to Salman Khan but for us, you wouldn't give a second or a third chance.”

The duo have become smalltime contractors in the freight trains, and spend most days at the
Bombay Central station. On weekends, they go home to their wives, and return to a life that
they are the most familiar with on Sunday evenings.

“One day we will make our own film. Ram will man the camera, I will act,” he
says. “Slumdog Millionaire is our story. Only that they got there first. We were still figuring
out our lives.”

“What is there to learn. Thoda masala, thoda dance, thoda pyar,” Ram says. “Apne ko pata
hai picture mein kya dalta hai.”

So much Bollywood in their veins, they even loved like in the movies. There used to be this
girl, the station master's daughter who Rafiq was nuts about, and she would come every
evening to her father in the building opposite the station.

“I used to wait, and steal glances. I thought I was a poor man, and I should first become
worthy of her, and then propose her, but in this, I missed the boat,” he says.

Rafiq's ears are pierced and he wears studs.

“In Dharamveer, Dharmendra is wearing studs so I thought I should also do it,” he
says. “He is a great actor.”

Ram is a bit older than Rafiq. His father was a drug addict and he was forced to work at the
station to provide for his mother.

To counter the dark side of life, they'd celebrate with small things like playing video games
at a parlour in Tardeo. Raj was a master of the game and when he played, people would
gather to see him win one set after another.
When Karishma Kapoor and Rahul Roy's 1992 Sapne Saajan Ke was being shot at the film
city, both of them had been there, waiting for a chance to get the camera to pan on them.

“I tried to run ahead to get in the camera, but I wasn't there when I went to see the film,”
Rafiq says.

At the set of Andaz Apna Apna, where Salman Khan and Aamir Khan played comic roles,
Rafiq and Ram decided they'd not run anymore. Rather, they'd work their way up. But then,
so many years have passed. Exorcise your demons, they say.

And they laugh. It ain't that easy, they say.

“There's a certain charm about this life. You get up in the morning and you have 200 toilets
to choose from. We mean the train coaches, and tell me, how many toilets does a rich man
have?” Rafiq says. “There's the air-conditioned cinema hall if you want to sleep, or get
entertained.”

Both were fascinated with the white women who came to the city.

“I wanted to fall in love with one. They looked so fantastic,” Rafiq says.

Ram fell in love with a bar dancer. Those were the fun days. She'd come to Bombay Central
with food for him, used to wait for him to enter the bar before she'd dance.

“We'd go for long taxi rides, stay in hotels, smoke and drink,” Ram says. “She loved me.
I'd go and shower money where she danced. But such love is doomed. But no complaints.
If there was a heartache, I'd listen to sad songs. If there was a happy moment, love songs.
Bollywood for every occasion.”

Ram and Rafiq volunteer at the Childline NGO and help other runaway children find a
footing in life. They were not lost, so they'd see to it others aren't. So long as they are not
doing drugs, it is fine, they say.

There's freedom, and there's easy money. It's a life not everyone can deal with. There's pain,
and there's homesickness but once they have tasted freedom, they'd never want to turn back.

There's a bunch of them taking a break at the station. One young boy walks over to Rafiq.

“I have bought the Rajdhani train,” he says. “Rs. 15,000. Now, it is mine.”

“What he means is that he has bought the rights to collect the silver foil from the food
trays from the train from another gang. In this life, we have ethics, and we strike deals. We
honour those. There's a code for the streets.”

Till they find their way on the silver screen. The dreams are only vanquished if they let go.
They haven't. Not yet.