JOIN USShakti Mills, where an intern with a magazine was allegedly gang-raped, has a dense foliage with pillars standing mutely and has attracted filmmakers for shooting fight sequences or a duet between a lovey-dovey couple or sometimes even a rape scene.
The sprawling moss-carpeted, dilapidated Shakti Mills Compound is also a favourite place for couples seeking some privacy in silence and under the shadows of high shrubs. The place is also a hangout of drunks and drug-addicts.
The majestic Shakti Mills that once hummed with weaving loom machines, is today strewn with broken liquor bottles and used condoms.
It is one of the places lost in the mists of time with legal disputes dragging in courts after the famous 1982 Mumbai mills strike. The closures left over a lakh of workers jobless and hungry on streets.
Land sharks moved in thereafter and successive governments began selling out the mills’ land. The result: South-central Mumbai has more malls and ultra-swanky office complexes than any other part of the city.
But several such mills, due to legal wrangles, continue to remain out of bounds for land predators and builders.
It was this story of ‘Bombay once upon a time’ that the barely out-of-teens budding photographer working as an intern for a magazine focussing on culture, art and heritage was asked to do.