Skip to main content

A picture is worth....


One of the things we do as a family is look at all our pictures. Just a random slide show, of all the pictures playing on the family TV when nothing More interesting is on. It's a big and ever growing collection of pictures - right from our wedding to any taken in the recent past. I have also been meaning to get the older printed ones scanned and available for this collection. 
You recognise some faces, some events - of course from the time you've been with us. Surprisingly, you can also guess about some of our pictures that are way older than you are - from a time that seems like a life before last. One fact is, we might already have a bigger collection of pictures with you in our lives than those without.
To a large extent, this is purely because its much easier now to be able to capture happier moments on a reproducible medium than it ever before was. Our parents and us mostly relied on our memories to dwell on for indulging in nostalgia. Most pictures those days were events in themselves - far and few between, calculated to be taken at a time that was expected to be happier without unpleasant surprises. So you'll see many  pictures of weddings, birthdays, holidays etc from those days. Not many pictures captured normal day-to-day happy moments of our lives. At least not for us belonging to the not-so-well-to-do class of people anyway.

For your life and generation though, you would expect to see snapshots of happy moments throughout your life. Well, as happy as could be captured by the lens of the camera. That is why I try to capture you in the act - playing, acting up or just being yourself.

Dear daughter,
In life, there is more often than not, much more than what meets the eye. No one would ever know whatever goes on between and behind those two eyes with a smiling face in a picture. However, not dwelling at the wrinkles and looking at the bigger picture is also a good habit to have. If a picture with a smile is worth a thousand words describing happiness, a thousand happy pictures must be worth volumes of happy times that could never be put to words.

That's the big picture I hope and wish to leave for you- that we have a huge collection of day to day pictures with happy moments. In your later life, when you are reading this, there might be times when nostalgia of happier past will accentuate the relative unhappiness of present. That's part and parcel of duality of life. These snapshots of happy moments should be your secret palette of bright colours to go back to even if the vision around is dark and full of shadows.
Don't worry and do not despair. Keep on collecting those happy moments of your own and add them to the collection we've left for you. Not just on the newest mediums out there but as fond memories in your heart.
In the grand landscape of our life's portrait, a few dark shades here and there would only help to bring out the bright hues we've splashed all over the scenery. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Empty Vessels ....

"Dad, what’s that noise?" "It’s the door creaking" "Dad, what’s that noise" "It’s the doorbell." "Dad, what’s that noise?" "It’s the bin collector."   “Dad, what’s that noise?” – That will be amongst my prominent memories from your trip to India when you were two and a half years. This was your third trip to my motherland but your first with a decent enough cognisance to notice the noise and wonder about it. I don't think though you would even remember the question or the various seemingly weird answers to be better prepared on your next visit to India. "Dad what’s that noise?" "It’s the drums. Someone is about to get married later today. " "Dad, what’s that noise?" "That’s the TV. They are ‘discussing’ a political issue live. " "Dad, what’s that noise?" "Someone is honking the horn in their car. That’s how they drive here as everyone has th...
Post a Comment
Read more

"That's a BIG Number !?!"

You turned four a few days month back. Your mom and I have been pushing that as a 'coming of age' number to get you to step up where need be. So we egg you on with wheedles like - "a four year old drinks her milk out of a cup, not a bottle. So hold this Cup Rheya" or "You are now old enough to tidy up your own toys". Or "What do you mean 'are we not going ?' Take my car and drive yourself to pre-school!" Nah! That last one isn't true. I'd never give you my car, I only asked you to pick up mamma's car ! 😜 Most of the times you happily shoulder the respon­sibility as growing older is the in thing until you are in your 20s. In your little 'social circle' you still look up to being at least as old as the princesses and fairies and Elsas and Sophies. I think to the one who justifiably claims the highest age there is a prize of a little momentary feeling of entitlement. But then that is common across all victories - entitleme...
Read more

“Main nahin pata”

Naanu and Naani were here. Naani tried to converse with you in Hindi and guess what, you tried too. You would break into what would sound like, a hindi accent and utter the 2-4 words you needed to. Like ‘Ek minat’ (one minute) when Naani would ask you to have your lunch. You could also do ‘paani de do’, ‘haan ji’ and ‘naee’ (no) as basic answers. My favourite was your slow and thickly pronounced ‘Main nahin pata’ as your way to say ‘I don’t know’. Grammatically, it should be ‘Mujhe nahin pata’ but ‘Main’ happens to be a more direct translation of ‘I’ hence your repeat err. The best part was, even when you were conversing with Naani in english, you would take on this slow, slightly sing-songish accent as if to make your words more hindi-like. I guess it did demonstrate your empathy in understanding your Naani’s limits with english and it worked too! You had the near fairy tale fun time with your grandparents on their trip. They got you tons of gifts - heaviest being the full set of Indi...
Post a Comment
Read more