She doesn’t just share pictures – she shares the many stories of success, failure, hopes, dreams, desires and so much more behind the faces that make it to her well-known and loved Facebook page. Meet Karishma Mehta, the human behind Humans of Bombay.
In November 2010, a young man named Brandon Stanton started taking pictures of people in New York City and sharing little vignettes of their lives on a Facebook page called Humans of New York (HoNY).
Little did he know that his little hobby would take the world of social media by storm, garnering over 16 million “likes” and spawning a host of similar pages in virtually every country of the world.
Brandon Stanton
Photo Credit: Niyantha Shekar/Flickr
India too sprouted several “Humans of ” pages overnight, but most of them have either vanished as quickly as they came or languished for lack of attention.
In sharp contrast is the Humans of Bombay page on Facebook, run by 23-year-old Karishma Mehta.
Karishma Mehta
The following of this page has grown by leaps and bounds to reach four lakhs in a short period of time, entirely due to Karishma’s meticulous efforts in capturing poignant photographs and stories of the many Mumbaikars she meets every day.
“Tell me your story,” she often requests of the old and young and middle-aged she meets on a daily basis. But ask her the same question and she laughs – “That’s why I am behind the camera, and not in front of it. In all probability, if someone stops me on the road, says ‘can I take your photograph?’, and asks me to share my story, I would say ‘no’!”
Every day, Karishma goes out to meet and converse with five to ten strangers on the streets of the city.
“I couldn’t conceive for a very long time, even though I was going through extensive treatments. Finally years later, something in my treatment ticked and I was pregnant. You know how it is with Indian families – everyone begins to guess the gender of the child before it’s even born, but I never took part in that – I was only concerned with the health of my baby.
When I delivered, everyone was excited to know the sex of the baby and my whole family was really happy to know that it was a baby girl. I remember hearing, ‘oh my god, it’s a girl!’ and I just kept thinking, ‘oh my god, it’s a healthy child.’ I thanked God with all my heart for blessing me with Motherhood that day and everyday of my life. She’s 22 years today, and still the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She listens to their stories, clicks their photographs, and finally shares her work on the Humans of Bombay page. These are stories of success and failure, hope and inspiration, dreams and heartbreaks – each one unique and memorable.
Karishma started the page in January 2014. “I was just out of college when I started it. At that time, I had been following HoNY closely, so I knew that something like this existed. But I also knew that something like this had not been done correctly in a city like Bombay, which has so many different worlds in it. Thus I started the page pretty much as an experiment to see how it would pan out. But as it grew, my passion towards this work kept growing,” she says.
Born and brought up in Bombay, she describes her life as “a very normal one.” After studying at Bombay Scottish School, she went on to a boarding school in Bangalore for two years. This was followed by three years of college in UK. “I would say I was on the sheltered side…” she remembers.
In the beginning, Karishma’s parents did not understand what she was doing. “They were a bit confused as there was no specific definition for what I was doing back then,” she says. But her friends had been following HoNY, so they knew. “They supported me, gave a lot of healthy criticism, and also encouraged me to not give up. That initial push was very important for me to continue for as long as I have.” She now has the complete support of her parents as well.
Ask her about the experience of collecting such personal stories from complete strangers and Karishma says – “It is not easy to talk to strangers on the road and engage with them in a conversation for five to six minutes…But when you do so, you will be surprised by the kind of things you hear in response to just a simple question! That’s because everybody has a story. Literally every person walking on a street has some story that they want to share. The important thing is to focus on the simple questions that can bring about these very powerful narrations.”
Karishma, a business and economics major, never took any lessons in photography. For her, it has all been about her passion; photography is something that she “learned on the job.” With two interns to assist her she goes out to shoot for about five hours every day and shares one story a day on Facebook, after writing about it and editing the picture. While most of her time goes in maintaining the page itself, she is also involved in some freelance projects that deal with writing.
Currently, she is also busy working on a Humans of Bombay book that will be out soon.
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“I was a chef in the Taj banquet kitchen when the gunshots started that night. Initially the news was that it was an internal gang war in a neighbourhood nearby and that it would die down soon. It was only at about 10:30 – 11PM that we understood the magnitude of what was going on. We were 7 chefs in total in the kitchen that night, not one of whom left the Taj despite knowing all exit points. By then the shootout had happened at the Wasabi restaurant and all those who had survived were pouring into the banquet hall and kitchen where we were working. As soon as we had heard about the shootout, we prepared sandwiches for our surviving guests which we then handed out. After this, we entered the corridor to escort our guests out of the hotel through the back entrance. We had successfully helped a few guests when I saw the left profile of a terrorist in a red cap, who began shooting.
I was standing next to a refrigerator, when my head chef and sous chef both got shot. There was chaos, panic and fear as our guests started running everywhere – but by then they had opened fire in all directions. I remember running towards the kitchen and looking around to see that no one else had made it. All of a sudden, everything went quiet and that silence was the worst. I tried looking around for survivors, but it was just me. I stayed there for a few hours, until I realised that no help was coming anytime soon. I walked out of the kitchen and saw all of my colleagues dead on the floor – the whole Taj was deserted. I looked at the refrigerator where I’d been only a while ago and it had 3 bullet holes in it – I’d narrowly escaped death, but it was horrifying to see that my guests and colleagues hadn’t been as lucky. I won’t look back on that day as just a terrorist attack, but a day when many brave individuals looked death in the eye to help others.”
What has been one of the most memorable moments of her life till now? She has an answer this time:
“It is a personal one. Very recently, my sister delivered a baby boy and it was like an I-can’t-describe kind of moment. I was very happy.”
The one thing she is looking forward to for Humans of Bombay?
“I am looking forward to seeing more people open up to share larger aspects of their lives. I have had a series of people who have given me their stories but as soon as they see the reach that the platform has they say they don’t want to share them further. I would love people to realise that sharing is not always a bad thing. You are not always judged. You are not always looked upon negatively. Sometimes, it could actually help you.”
Her advice to people?
“I am a business and economics major and I am doing something that is not directly based on that line. And I don’t think it matters. It is about what you want to do, what you feel will get you to a certain place in life…just go with it.”
Her favourite stories? “I am biased. I like them all,” laughs Karishma.
Recently, she shared the picture of a woman named Zaaria who has come out of a very abusive marriage after struggling for years.
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“His family and my family have lived in the same building for years but since his business was in Bombay and Dubai, I barely saw him. This one day, he asked my driver which college I was studying in, he came there, waited for me to finish class and asked me to coffee. We ended up chatting for an hour that day and I was completely enamoured by him — he was such a charmer! His parents wanted us to marry quickly because he was 7 years older – so at 19 I got married to someone who I thought was the man of my dreams…but he was an asshole.
It started at the honeymoon, where I wasn’t allowed to look anywhere but towards him, wasn’t allowed to enter shops which he didn’t like and was supposed to wear only what he wanted me to. We were to visit our relatives in London, so he asked me to wear a salwaar but no jacket…and I remember freezing. When we went back to Dubai, he didn’t allow me to turn on the AC and if I did in the middle of the night because it was so hot – he would smash my perfumes, candles and upturn my entire wardrobe. He would drive his convertible car at the maximum speed and threaten to throw me out if I ever disobeyed him. Once, in between abusing and screaming at me, he pinned me down, forced himself upon me and 6 months into my wedding I was pregnant. He hid my medicines saying I don’t need them — I was throwing up 30 times a day and all the minerals in my body had drained to the point that I couldn’t stand and that’s when he agreed to take me to the hospital. The nurse there saw me once and said ‘I’ve to take you to the emergency room – and had you come a day later you would return to Bombay in a coffin’. When I went home after those 3 days, he pushed me, I started bleeding and he waited 24 hours to take me back to the hospital. On the hospital slip it said ‘bled yesterday and brought to the hospital today.’
He only let me return home because my parents were at Hajj. When I came home, I asked him if I could stay for a night in my own home instead of his – which he flatly refused. I was talking to my mother on the phone for 15 minutes when he called me 40 times, sent his sister upstairs to snatch my phone and sent me a text saying,’If you return to Dubai, I will rip your ass apart’ in Hindi. That’s when I decided I had enough.
The next 6 years were hell for me. He sent me a legal notice saying he wanted custody of my unborn child, but I would never let that happen. So 30 days after I had delivered and my stitches hadn’t healed – I went to the family court to fight for my son. My son has been to more courtrooms in the first 5 years of his life than most people ever would. He bribed people from the court and the judges to prolong this case and if not for this one police man who understood me and helped me – God knows how much longer I would have to continue my fight. In 2012, my hell was finally over. I won all cases because of that one hospital slip and received nothing in compensation from him or his family. He seemed so normal, but he snatched my innocence away. Please, don’t rush into marriage because so often what people appear to be and who they are, is entirely different. 10 years later, I’ve put it behind me because I have my son and my life is for him. He’s all that matters.”
The hard-hitting story of how Zaaria successfully improved her life was widely shared. “It is a very, very powerful story. Zaaria was so strong while narrating it that I was literally shocked,” remembers Karishma. And the best part is that it did not just end there. People actually went ahead and expressed their support for Zaaria.
“She was overwhelmed. She told me that she has got messages from all over the world with people praising her for her courage and bravery…it is just amazing.”
Given that her page has had such an impact, it is not surprising that Karishma also chose to utilise it for a larger purpose.
“My mother and I had to come to Bombay to support ourselves, once my father sold our family food business and didn’t support us. She got into the sex trade since that time and I always feel upset because she thinks its ‘dirty work’. Why is it considered dirty? My mother is a woman of strength and I want her and all like her to know that it’s okay.
Dirty are those men who force themselves on us, abuse us and walk away. I was raped as well, but for 7 years I kept it within me because I thought I was dirty. It was only after I came to Kranti and went through intense therapy that I finally found a voice. I will start volunteering with a sex workers’ rights group next month and give speeches and detailed information on the rights of sex workers. I was once blaming myself for being raped, but today I know better — It’s not my fault. I want to inspire the thousands like me, who have kept quite and felt dirty. We’re not dirty ones.”
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A few months ago the young girls of Kranti were thrown out of their house, by a landlord who refused to pay them back their deposit. These are young girls who are the daughters of sex workers with big dreams. Kranti, nurtures their dreams, gives them a place to stay safe at night, teaches them and exposes them to a new world…one they’d never known before.
We’re starting a campaign to raise Rupees 5,00,000 for Kranti. This money will be used by Kranti to make a home for these girls in a space that’s currently unhygienic, dusty and in complete shambles. They all have to share one tiny bathroom which makes them late for school, there’s no proper construction — just bare, dilapidated walls with no beds.
Lets give these girls a place they can call home.
She conducted a Facebook campaign with the aim of raising funds for an organization called Kranti that helps the daughters of sex workers in Mumbai. While the aim was to collect Rs. 5 lakhs, Humans of Bombay ended up collecting Rs. 6.5 lakhs in just one day.
But what is it that keeps her going out to work on something that does not even pay? “I like listening to people’s stories. I like knowing that the next stranger on the block will have a story that people will appreciate. And I like to be the mediator of that story. The fact that I can bring those stories to the world is what pushes me,” she concludes.
Visit Humans of Bombay here.
Source……….Tanaya Singh……..www.the betterindia.com
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