Transition

I remember the day when we first had a digital camera with us. It was the occasion of ‘BhaiTika’ (A day in Hindu culture when the sisters bless their brothers with prosperous and awesome future). If you remember well, before all this digital era we used to have simple reels, a pair of battery and a black camera. The clicks were limited; 30 generally and if you were extremely lucky you would get max. of 35 clicks to click. You would actually get a hard print of the image after it was processed with whatever liquid in a dark room. Ah! those days were golden.

So this day when we first had a digital camera with us, most of us did not know how to use it. I mean, it did not have any reels in it. We the next generation however (me, my brother and my sister) knew the concept that it contained a memory and the reels would not run out. But our mother however, she would not let us grab the camera. She was afraid that we would break it or would end up using the reels for our ‘selfies’. (Those days we did not have the word selfie, but still did take selfies; that too on a grandfather camera.) So back to my mother, she was very careful about not breaking the camera and only taking limited shots. It is amazing now if you think she actually had a counter in her mind. I mean who thinks about how many picture they have got on their gallery ? All we think about is how much Mb or Gb of space is used and how much is left. Hence even after having a digital camera and a memory of 256 mb we ended up taking exactly 33 pictures of that day. Each of them very precious and beautiful. I still remember the joy of the new camera and all those good memory of that day.

But the years to follow were not so enthusiastic. Partly because we were all growing up and partly because we had more pictures than the memory of that particular day. We were too focused on taking the pictures rather than enjoying the moment.

Not that I am against the digital revolution, but now whenever I look through my phone’s gallery and see multiple pictures of the same group of people or the same object, I tell myself, why do I even need to keep the best among all these repeated images ? It would have done, even if I had a single picture, even if it were blurred because of my shaky hands. If the memory is worth recalling, even a ruined picture would make you time travel to the good old day.

Afterall pictures are to capture the moments you have already lived before.