Meet the young and enterprising Mobeen Ansari, as he documents his captivating voyages, across borders, through photographs
As he walks up to me with an almost hesitant smile, Mobeen Ansari seems like a college student lounging around at Gostana, a café in Bandra. But this twenty-something from Pakistan is more than that. Apart from being quite a name on social media, he is, more importantly, a celebrated photo journalist.
At the age of nine, Ansari contracted meningitis and lost his sense of smell and hearing as well as his sense of balance. "But my parents did not put me in a special school," he says, "they put me in a regular school and gave me a normal life. As a child, I used to work a lot with visuals. In the eighth or ninth standard, I took my father's camera to school and captured emotions of people during sports and functions. Later, during college, I noticed that everyone was complaining about the country but no one was doing anything about it. So I decided to start telling people's stories."
As I browse through his first book Dharkan—The Heartbeat of a Nation; a pictorial essay about iconic people and unsung heroes of Pakistan; he tells me that it is about them because of whom the country is still alive today.
The empathy and humility that flow through Ansari's photographs and words make me wonder about the countless beautiful moments and people that we, as Indians, are missing out on, due to the political strife between the two countries. Just as I am about to express that thought, Arpana Gvalani, owner of Gostana and a curator of cultural and media festivals in the city, shares, "My relatives live in Pakistan and through some link, I received a copy of Dharkan. After seeing Ansari's work and perusing his book, I wanted to work with him on showcasing these stories. Art has no boundaries and we are working on a project to showcase exactly that."
When asked about his views about Mumbai, he says, "This city, in many ways, is similar to Karachi—the same eclectic mix of people, high rises and the old world. I look forward to exploring more when I return in March."
We often stereotype a place and its people based on the larger perception that is created about them. However, Ansari is trying to share a fresh perspective through his work. As he rightly shares, "When people think of an icon from Pakistan, the face that instantly comes to mind is of Malala. But there are so many other lovely people in Pakistan, who the world and the younger generation of Pakistan have forgotten; these are the people that I have featured in my book."
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