03 May ‘Virtual Escapes’
It is said that ‘A picture can say a thousand words’. Indeed.
I’ll tell you my ‘thousand words’.
It is never too early or too late to fall in love with your spouse once again. I just came across a picture of my ‘tolerant half'(I love to call him that) from our dating days and all the visuals and memories came flashing and suddenly I was feeling all of 22 again. I smile for no reason, getting to see him after long day now has that extra punch/zing, my tone and phrases that I used to tease him back then are here again, I feel cheesy at daily conversations (which had become monotonous over 8 yrs of marital unison) and wanted to give him my best (not that I wasn’t doing all this in our married life already). Wow! What a feeling!!
A more than three year old picture of my three and a half year old sends me back to post partum phase when I was so overwhelmed with what to do with this bundle of innocence, this tender and dependant being making weird noises next to me and I forget the running, jumping, talkative, dictating little tornado in my house now. I think of that time when I was eating all I could lay my hands upon without putting on any additional weight and for a couple of minutes, I snooze the current mental alarm of ‘diet to lose weight’- Pure Bliss.
A picture was taken during my ‘Vidaai’ at our wedding. The picture captures the moment very symbolically – I am hugging my Papa while my teary-eyed Mummy looks on and my few hours old Husband, standing tied to me with the Gathbndhan looks at his new family with a gleam of accomplishment in his eyes. Even after 8 yrs of that day, I look back at this picture and become that adored daughter who could have used some more time with her parents and siblings. For a while, I forget that I myself am a Mom now and just bask in the glory of parents’ love and care.
There are numerous others that take me into flashbacks – pictures of stage performances from our college festival, pictures of shopping for family after receiving my first salary, first vacation after my little one was born and the list goes on.
During the last trip to my home, my Maika, I happened to see some of the old, black and white albums of my papa’s childhood, my grandparents looked young beyond recognition, my mummy’s pictures as the new bride, my own newborn pictures and my younger siblings who looked way too cute and innocent back then (unlike now, unfortunately).
After seeing all that a thought came and stayed in my mind that while these days we click a lot of pictures every now and then (thanks to the camera phones with unbelievable megapixels), we do not realize how important these images would become after a few months or years or decades for that matter.
But somewhere in the crowd of selfies, groupfies, from every dish that we eat to every expression we can distort our face into, we tend to miss our landmarks, something we would actually cherish after years. Also, I think, selective memories would be simpler to maintain as well (especially for people like me who are occupied all the time- physically or mentally), instead of storing and maintaining crazy amount of hard discs, pen drives and other data storage devices.
So now I have decided that I am going to take some of the most loved clicks, make an album, a physical one, like the good old days and preserve all the memories forever and ever in touchable form.
P.S. I still believe in clicking numerous pictures, selfies, pout pictures (and my three and a half-year-old is catching up quickly on that) and find out the best shot; just that now I will also work seriously towards preserving a handful of them.
This festival season, let’s use the colourful photo frames, adorn the walls and table tops with these virtual escapes and create many more for now and the future. Let pictures be our decorations.
Happy clicking!!
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