<p>Shakti 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.<br /><br /></p>.<p>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.<br /><br />The majestic Shakti Mills that once hummed with weaving loom machines, is today strewn with broken liquor bottles and used condoms.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />But several such mills, due to legal wrangles, continue to remain out of bounds for land predators and builders.<br /><br />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.</p>
<p>Shakti 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.<br /><br /></p>.<p>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.<br /><br />The majestic Shakti Mills that once hummed with weaving loom machines, is today strewn with broken liquor bottles and used condoms.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />But several such mills, due to legal wrangles, continue to remain out of bounds for land predators and builders.<br /><br />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.</p>
