Memories become more permanent when you look at…!!!
Have you ever thought as to what would you like to take along with if you have to instantly vacate a house or leave the house in any untoward situation?
Hardly anything would come in one’s mind. If at all, the young generation has to do, in the present days, he would like to pick his mobile, charger. While the older one in those put their hands on cash, gold, property deeds. A distant relative also once told me that in an untoward situation, they packed their essential items – passports and documents including those of house title deeds as well as a carton of photographs accumulated over the years.
During my two shifting – one while moving to a rented house, to construct the new house by putting the parental house to ground zero having a construction of more than seven decades old. I disposed of most of the old items, unwanted furniture, and a number of documents which have no value for me now after retirement but kept a full carton of old family photos – prior to my birth and after till the retirement. With the start of the digital era, no still prints were taken out and the same confined to external hard discs or photo frames.
Though they are nicely preserved one has to attach them to the laptop or computer to view them. While the photos posted in the album – black and white and coloured one – which started during the year my marriage in 1975, are a part of our memory, to have quick look over them.
Photography is such an invention that everyone would like to enjoy over his own photograph. Even some parents pay for professional photographers to take styled shots of new-born curled in womb-like poses in baskets and flowerpots. Some are also clicked by visiting the nearby parks and get portraits framed up.
The best one is which were clicked during my theatre work, while posted in the City Beautiful – Chandigarh, in different costumes. Sometimes even now when I look over them, I feel as to how I could all that different roles – started from a one-minute entry on the stage of doctor’s role to the postman and so on in main character roles with the delivery of dialogues in different pitch and tones.
I also recollect that a few years back, I got prints of around thirty odd photographs with an idea to put an exhibition on the club meeting which includes – a cat on my typewriter, a mentally-retarded beggar in a stylish dress, a child sleeping with head over the tin etc.
Frankly speaking, memories become more permanent when you look at photos in hard copy, especially when you have problems locating those in external hard drives. I wish the time will come when the advanced computers of tomorrow are able to read our electronic files of today. Till then, I will keep on printing the best pictures for me to remember so that others to look back and be thankful for the years of life experienced.
Today, with the advent of Smartphone and affordable digital cameras, people are producing so many more photos. Some find their way to social media feeds but not many make the transition to print.
I want to remember all his when my memory starts to fail and the mind becomes hazy. That’s why I prefer to get prints of photographs in hard copy. In this way, the moments become more permanent and I don’t easily forget.
