Click a Pic...

Photos or pictures as they say speak a thousand words. If they did speak, they would tell us about all the things that happened on that particular day. Be it birthdays, functions, hanging out with friends, family times or any other occasion, there would always be a story to tell. The ways in which we get our photos clicked have undergone a lot of changes in the last century or so and I’m sure if the photographs could speak they would say the same story.

In the age of the Black & White Cameras, to get your photo clicked was nothing less than an occasion. Girls and boys alike used to spend hours dressing up so that they looked good in the photo. The trip to the local studio would have been nothing less than a parade. Look at me I’m going to the photo studio to get my photo clicked. Have you seen such photos? Not a strand of hair will be out of place.

 The timeline...

Then came the time of colour handheld cameras. It was also the time when cameras started becoming a household thing. I still remember our black Olympus camera. It was heavy by today’s standards but it still was a thing of beauty. If I remember correctly it was also me who destroyed it. Every occasion was saved as a memory in big photo albums making such occasions even more special. I sometimes still look through old photo albums for nostalgic reasons. But because of the high cost of camera rolls and their development, photos had to be clicked carefully. My dad was the expert of this period. He never liked it if I wasted even a single film on the roll and taught me how to handle a camera.

All this changed when digital cameras entered the market. It revolutionised the way we clicked photographs. Not having to think about the high costs of camera rolls and photo development anymore, clicking photos entered into a kind of frenzy. People started using cameras as if they are using a gun. I guess at this time the word ‘shooting’ was used in its literal sense. People began clicking photos of anything and everything. Where they used to spend hours looking for the right way to click a photo; now they spent that time clicking 100 photos in the hope that at least one would come right. The best though was how parents couldn’t get used to this new phenomenon initially. I remember my parents telling me not to click stupid pictures and waste the space. It took them quite a while to get used to the fact that I could just delete any picture I didn’t like.

Now again there has come a change in the way we click our photos. Though the hardware has remained much the same, the change is more of a syndrome. It is something I like to call the Facebook-Profile-Pic syndrome. It has affected the young generation or what we are also known as the Social Media generation. These days when we click our own photo we have to click one which is suitable for our display pic on Facebook. We rate it according to how many ‘likes’ or ‘comments’ we think we will get. It has to be either very funny or very suave. People might argue saying that they do not care about such things, but even they will admit they feel a bit disappointed if no one comments or likes their picture. It is but human!

So you might be thinking why I wrote about things you may already be aware of. Well I was recently going through my pictures and noticed just how much they have all changed! From the young and cute where I was unaware of the fact that my picture was being clicked, to a bit older when I had to look smart to now when I have to have a crazy photo of myself.

With technological innovations happening all the time, what do you think will be the next change?

Republic Day through the years...

The Tricolour at its best...

Today India celebrates 62 years of being a Republic. How do I know this? Well apart from the obvious general knowledge, it is the countless status updates and video postings of national anthems on Facebook and other social networking websites. Thinking about it, I realize just how much the way we celebrate Republic Day has changed over the years. At least in my case it has.

During my school days I used to look forward to the Republic Day as it was a school holiday and a welcome break from the routine of waking at 6 in the morning. But my mother had other plans. She would wake me up at 8am to get ready and go down to the "Flag-Hoisting" ceremony in our complex. We used to assemble at the one garden our complex had with children lined up in front, uncles behind and the aunties bringing up the rear. One of the uncles would proudly unfurl the flag and salute it with so much pride, as if he were unfurling it at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. After the national anthem, the uncles would line the children up and take us on a rally where we used to wave the flags at every random man on the street.

After lunch in the early evenings, the complex used to organise a series of sports events, where invariably I used to win or come runners-up in all the events. Later just before dinner I would feel really proud to get my cups and shields in a casual award ceremony.

By the end of my school days Republic Day for us had changed from singing national anthems at assemblies to watching the endless reruns of the classic patriotic movies like Krantiveer, Tiranga, Border, 1942 A love story, LOC, Pukar, Lagaan, Bhagat Singh (all 5), Rang De Basanti, Chak de and Nayak on the local TV channel. As my dear friend rightly said, the 26th Jans and the 15th Augusts should be more appropriately known as the J. P. Dutta day.

In college the way we looked at Republic Day changed again. For us Republic Day was not only a holiday but also a "Dry Day". More important than our dear country proudly becoming a Republic, it became a day when all the Bars and Alcohol shops were closed. The topic of discussions ranged from how much the Bars and shops loose money to how it is a sad day for all the alcoholics, instead of how well the country was doing now and how much it has improved over the years.

It has taken a long trip away from my country and home to realise how many memories are linked to this day. None of them patriotic in any sense, but memories nonetheless.

God Bless India!!
Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra, Jai Punjab, Jai Haryana......