While I am browsing through the net aimlessly in my laptop, an email from my brother lands in my inbox. He has sent me the link where he has posted latest snaps of my niece. I am super thrilled to see how much she has changed since we last saw her (of course on another .gif image). I immediately check out the snaps and also dutifully show them to my parents and grand mom so that they can admire her and revel in joy. Technology has definitely made our lives easier hasn’t it? I can’t stop myself from thinking about the days when we didn’t know much about these online portals, how one could post personal photographs and how near and dear miles apart can see them within the next 5 minutes. Also back then every house didn’t have a computer. We would be informed that the photo is on its way somewhere flying above the Atlantic and would reach us anytime. All of us would meticulously check our postbox (which is otherwise uncared for) for the neatly bubble-wrapped-from-inside envelope with US stamps and my brother's familiar handwriting. We would all be ecstatic to receive the package and would take turns admiring my niece and exclaiming in awe how tall she has become and how her hair has grown almost 5 mm compared to her previous photo session. The best of the lot will take its place in the showcase so that we can see her whenever we want to and the rest goes to the "my family" photos collection. And then they lie there for eternity.
It was a cloudy afternoon and the weather was amazing. Perfect setting to read a book of my choice sitting by the window occasionally taking a break to admire the rain laden clouds and the sweet smell of the soil just before a heavy downpour. But somehow I was not up to it that day. While I was moving from one room to another trying to figure out a way to spend the afternoon, I opened one of the cupboards in my grand mom’s room. Inside the cupboard was a neatly stacked column of plastic bags with photo albums of various sizes inside them. This was the master collection of all "my family" photographs. There were wedding albums of every member of the family, me and my brothers' childhood snaps, our school day snaps taken during every competition or event (right from our kindergarten days to higher secondary classes), my college snaps (well I should definitely take the credit for these because at some point when I was quite jobless I had collated them in chronological order as far as my memory could take me and I did that favour to my brother too) and photos taken during every trip or vacation and family gatherings. The frame sized moth-eaten photographs of my ancestors deserves a special mention. These included photographs of my grandfather's father, his family and his sibling’s family and even one generation before that I think. The photographs have a unique musty smell and a brownish tinge which clearly indicated its age. My grand mom once took me through these trying to make me understand the whole family tree by explaining who married whom and the various branches of the tree. But all her efforts were futile. Our family had numerous consanguineous marriages and at some point I really failed to understand how we were all related in more ways than one.
After rummaging through them for quite some time I stumbled on my childhood snaps. As I browse through them there is a faint smile at the corner of my lips. It’s almost as if I am trying to re-live each and every one of those moments now. I wonder if there was a fight between me and my brother just before that snap. Although my cheeks are dry I can see evidence of some tears in those two tear drops which stayed back in my eyes and failed to join the others in the running stream. Has the fight been put to an end by my mother whom I can see in the corner almost chopped off from the snap? My brother didn’t seem so happy. May be he didn’t quite get the pleasure that he wanted to by tormenting me with his big-brother-bullying ways. My mind wanders off as I move through each of them. It must have been quite a while since these albums saw the outside world. Every page is stuck on to the next and I really had to pull them apart (with great care of course) while they made a tearing sound. This was truly a cumbersome task but what the hell I wanted to see all of them no matter how long it took.
But there is also a thought haunting my mind. How often have I re-visited the picasa to see pictures that I have already seen? And if I did indeed re-visit them, did I feel as good as I did now? I mean here I am sitting in a recliner near the window with hot brewing coffee and the big albums nestled in my lap with every snap taking me to the most memorable moments of my past. Then I realize that it is these brownish-yellow tinged photos with their musty smell that really makes me feel nostalgic and reminds me of those frames of life that have long been forgotten in this fast paced world. When I am done with all of them I neatly put them back as they were and into the cupboard where they belong. An afternoon well spent - I think to myself.
