Photographs

I love clicking pictures , not mine though. Photographs of everything around which catches my attention. Out of all, I like happy pictures for they remind me of happy times.

I wonder how would the world have been without pictures to be stored, probably stories would have replaced them. I would have relied on the stories about my childhood and painted pictures in my imagination. Probably that would have been more fascinating for I could add any hue to it. When did I exactly outgrow my innocent self, I wonder!

What would it be like to get back the consciousness of yester years, to be a kid in an adults body, to live like there was no tomorrow. That precisely I guess is too much to hope for.

Years back when camera rolls offered you limited photographs to be clicked, important occasions marked the ritual of clicking photos. It had to have some significance attached and supposedly if you happened to have no luck, you couldn't make it to the camera roll. That was the charm of the whole ritual, that indeed made photographs special. Fast forward today, it's no longer a ritual. You rarely find the whole family coming together for one single pic which makes to the frame. My grandpa always complains about one thing, before I click any picture of him. He enquires , "Would I get to hold the picture?". He wants to hold it, to show it to its friend. That keeps me thinking, he is a prisoner of time. He has made it to the 21st century but within him lives his old self, who fails to welcome the digital world whole heartedly.

The best part about pictures is, they don't change. We don't change in them. A gap toothed child smiling at the back of his scooter will never get back his tooth, a girl in ribbons will never lose it, my grandma who is long dead will always smile through the picture I have of her. That's what makes photographs special. They speak stories. They let us sort of time travel though in the imaginary scape.

Life wouldn't have been convincing without photographs. Period.