"When I'm getting out of town, this is what I see...
Bhakts dancing to Baby Doll Main Sone Di...
I got a haathi's head but I ain't afraid to show it...show it...show it...
I'M BAPPA AND I KNOW IT!"
This is the caption to one of 'Non Humans of Bombay' photos on facebook where Lord Ganesha is sitting in a lit-up cart being taken for immersion. What started as a parody of 'Humans of Bombay' page has taken a life of its own with over 25,000 likes in the span of five months. Chronicling the lives of non-humans of Mumbai, the creators of this page didn't expect this kind of response in their wildest of dreams.
HOB was created on the lines of Humans Of New York (HONY). Brandon Stanton, a former bonds trader and now a photographer, started a facebook page capturing lives of ordinary citizens and has found millions of fans on facebook. NHOB on the other hand was created as a parody of HOB. "HOB wasn't original or thought provoking like HONY. I thought that if that can work why not this," said Amogh Ranadive, head content writer at Weirdass Comedy.
"I was just sitting in my office and I thought why don't I click a photo of a wooden stick and ask it a general HONY question like what was the saddest moment of your life and in response write that I'm just a wooden stick, don't ask me such silly questions. It was a completely random idea and I asked my friend Nishant to help me with photography and now I feel that I have created a monster," said 24-year-old Amogh.
"We began on April 7 this year with the photo of a toy panda. That photo went viral and we have not looked back since. Now there are Non Humans of Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and Coimbatore. We have even found some American or European Non Humans pages. One has even plagiarized our wada-pav gastroenteritis caption and pasted it on a taco picture. We have received so many marriage proposals on our page. Girls have said that they will turn lesbians if the admin of the page is a girl," chuckled Nishant Tahilramani, 21-year-old photographer and writer, who admits to stalking the page as much as he can.
From local trains, BEST buses, hoardings and bathroom mugs, NHOB has captured many of the city's eccentricities. The one post that is their common favourite is the mango post where the mangos only purpose of life is to get molested by Katrina Kaif, followed by the Rolls Royce post where it is complaining that 'pay n park' is too expensive. Amogh believes that the success of this page is in its freshness.
With likers, come haters. NHOB has received a lot of backlash for their Independence Day Rubiks cube post and their lady driver post. They also received flak for constantly updating photos with sexual innuendos and profanity. "We accept that we made a mistake. We have since become careful about captions that are sexual in nature," said Amogh who is also getting complaints regarding low frequency of posts. "We don't want to kill the momentum that the page is generating. We will be murdering our own page if we do that. It so happens that we have seven photos with no captions and two captions with no photos," he said. "We recently shifted from our Bandra office and don't have many eateries in the new place. Basically we're hungry and not lazy and if we had more food options in this area, the frequency would go up," said Nishant.
As a result, NHOB has now started accepting fan entries. Fans can click photos of anything interesting about Mumbai and they will write a caption for it and post it. "We had got a great response and people started giving us ideas so we thought we will accept contributions and give them credit. It would make our lives easy and also create goodwill" said Amogh.
You can make contributions by messaging to them on their page on facebook which is Non Humans of Bombay.
Wada Pav
"What do you think is wrong with the world?"
"People's attitudes man. I mean, everybody is only thinking about themselves. Nobody thinks about others in society! Everything is about taking. Nobody gives back. I believe everyone should give back to the society."
"What have you given?"
"Gastroenteritis."
Mango
"Describe your life in three steps."
"You're born, you grow, and you get molested by Katrina Kaif."
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