"...worth a thousand words !"

Okay, I start with a confession. This is a story about someone whose real name I cannot remember . Or maybe I never knew his real name in the first place and always associated him with the name that got stuck on him, like it often happens in small town India.

We used to know this gentleman during my childhood, someone who was very fond of taking pictures. Wherever he went, he would carry his camera on him. Like other photography buffs, “Photographer Uncle “(as we kids used to address him ) too loved to travel. One of his favourite jokes was that that while packing his travel bag, his camera would be the first thing to go in, even before his toothbrush. However, unlike most photographers, his area of interest was not restricted to nature alone. He had a keen eye for human subjects and he loved to capture the myriad nuances of people he knew. Weddings, birthdays, holidays or even funerals – you could always count on “Photographer Uncle” to capture every face and every emotion – & freeze it forever on print.

With age, he became a serious photography enthusiast and accumulated quite a lot of knowledge about his hobby that had quite become his craft now. He taught himself new technology as the world shed its analog / B&W past, and moved into a new digital era. His prized collection of countless albums in his living room got replaced by neat stacks of digital storage devices in later years . His joy would know no bounds when someone would call on him and request for a souvenir from a specific past event. He would happily oblige and autograph the particular snap , scribbling – “Love, always ! Me " , and mention the year beside it.

He was generous enough to give us many rare and unexpected photographs from his treasures whenever we visited his pad . Those photographs would find their way into some hard bound albums at our house.

And then get buried for good , under the burden of daily life. No one really bothered to sit and leaf through them as everyone was caught up in his or her individual race for existence.

A few years back I was in Calcutta on some official work and was staying at my parents’ flat . I was grounded at home due to a rain washed weekend between a working Friday and Monday. Having nothing better to do, I started rummaging through the book shelves, hoping to discover some unread book . It was then that my eyes fell on a dusty grey photo album, tucked behind the rows of books in a crowded shelf – ignored and devoid of human touch, probably for years.

Out of curiosity, I took it out and started leafing through the black and white ensemble of once-known faces .

What started as an idle ploy to kill time and play a “who’s that ?” game with myself , soon had me completely engrossed. Chunk after chunk of past fragments of my bygone life started jumping off the wrinkled pages and hitting me with a feeling I cannot possibly describe. There were singles and there were family pictures, pictures from picnics, gatherings, social evenings, festivals. The oldest picture in the album was from the late 70s, which showed me as a small boy huddled between my parents at some carnival , and eying something at a food stall.

And there were lots more. Pictures of the younger versions of my parents, their vibrant faces devoid of creases, pictures of my brother as a toddler on his tricycle, that of me with a bandaged head after what might have been one of my several childhood accidents , a picture of my dad (in a rare French beard) trying to control Jacky (our dog), and that of my mum sitting on a stage, enacting the role of a scheming home-breaker in some play at the annual cultural do.

It was one of the most fascinating sixty minutes I had spent in a long time , as I sat by myself in the company of my yesterday. Each picture carried a story in it and each of those stories added up to the “me” that I am today. Like most people, I often get into these “impostor syndrome” phases every now and then, feeling that I am stuck in role plays and am not the human being externally as what I am deep within. This sudden trip into the past gave me a sneak peek into an era where my?innocence was not lost yet, where my smiles were full and my tears were real.

With each passing moment, we move into a new self and our old self dies. The new self is always more complex, hardened , suspicious and cynical than its predecessors.

Maybe all these accumulate and show up as the lines of age on our faces. An infant has only two kinds of lines on his face – a frown line and two smile lines. As we grow up, we complicate things. We smile when we don’t have to and we cry for things we shouldn’t care about. We keep trying to look and act to conform to a certain set of norms, hungry for social validation and acceptance. And then when we look back at ourselves one rainy afternoon, we can hardly recognize or touch the simplicity that once was.

I pull out a snap of mine where I am holding a basketball in my hands. I am wearing a pair of shorts and a Tee Shirt with a logo and caption of “Moscow Olympics” on it . I am also wearing the widest toothless smile on my sun burnt face and my unruly mop of hair is falling over my eyes. I look like a complete urchin. And I look completely happy. I pull the picture out and turn it around. The neat handwriting in green italics says –

“ Dear Ayon. Love Always ! Photographer Uncle (1980)”

“Photographer Uncle ” passed away sometime in the early 2000s. I remember having felt something amiss when I had heard the news (a rare emotion for an otherwise tough nut like me). Today I understand why.

In many ways, he was one of those people who play custodians of the past for us. They document and preserve our lives as they go, leaving us memoirs to re-visit and reflect when we are older .

Always take pictures. Never mind the sneering eyes or mocking onlookers. Grin, wave, pose and dance if you wish. But do capture every segment of your life as you go. Invest in memories. There will always be a rainy day when you feel a little lonely and disillusioned about yourself. Go back to these memories then. They will reintroduce you to yourself. And to your innocence.

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( From my 2012 archives. In the pic, I am standing 2nd from left, top row :) )

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(This was part of a chapter in my 2020 book, 'As You Life It'. Do leave your reactions / comments)

My new book, 'Life as unusual - Work as usual', a collection of standalone nuggets / articles sitting on overlapping boundaries of work & life, is now available on & trending among the top titles in its category on Amazon India. Would you like to check it out & / or gift it to a friend / colleague? The link is as below -

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