Of Life, Death & Photographs

A photograph of my paternal grandmother (center) with her family.

Some thing more valuable than life itself is its record. While visual recreates the scene, written word adds insight to it.

Photographs lie, paint a false picture but this constructed reality is what we choose over our own memories which are fantastical themselves.

These photographs, they erode, just like our memories but they provide a visual proof of what was, thereby immortalizing a moment of your life.

Therefore Life is fleeting, but photographs are forever.

We all want to be remembered but we're mere immortals like footprints on sand. No matter how deep the imprint, it will wash off eventually.

Marvels of imagery are stranger to no-one which is why there is a boost of new imaging technology in the market today.

Photographs are also tools to acquaint current generation to the past for a myriad of reasons.

Nobody understand the importance of photographs than those who have lost their loved ones.

Where visual ends, written word picks up. Reading an account of past lives by means of biographies or auto-biographies binds the story together. It fills onto the missing details in a photograph. You read the why, where and how which is always amiss in the 'what' of photographs.

Humans have time and again made efforts to bust the mysticism of death but no matter how many tools you device, the mystery prevails. That is majorly because of the fact that death comes so suddenly to one and also because you can never know a person inside out. For that to happen, you need to first know how one's brain works and that no scientist has been able to figure out so far.

My grandfather passed away long before my father got married. All I have of him is one life size framed portrait in the dining room.

I have heard amazing accounts of my family about the kind of jolly person he was but I just cannot relate to any of the stories with that sombre, uninterested face in the portrait. I wish we had more pictures of him, in his element, laughing, cracking jokes, working and partying.

My maternal grandfather, on the other hand, passed away earlier this year. He was a man of less words who strongly depended on his easel to put his feelings across. He was a painter who loved to sketch our faces on big canvases and paint landscapes. As a kid, I was very close to him but we drifted apart as I grew up. There was no specific reason except my grandmother was more affectionate and vocal and being of the same gender I connected with her more.

Nonetheless, he loved to know the details about my life, what I study, what have I recently learnt, what books I read, what interesting tidbits of information I had to share with him and that is all our conversations revolved around, whenever we met.

Now that he is gone, I can only remember my childhood with him and feel sorrier for the loss of his wife and family. He, like my own father, loved to take pictures and owned camera in a time few others did. Last year I scanned some old pictures of my grandparents for a college project and I was blown away by the content. These were photos of their honeymoon, their holidays in Kashmir, the soirees that they threw etc. The man I saw in the pictures was livelier and louder than the subdued man that I had come to know him as.

That void, created after his death, will always be with his wife and family but they have the souvenir of his glorious life to always remember him by. Although, no matter how many photographs you collect, they cannot replace the absence of the lost one.

At the end of the day, memories are infinitesimal but photographs and pages of a memoir are numbered.

And yet they are our real treasure because no matter how misleading they are, photographs freeze a moment when we're happy. The diaries that we maintain, our first person account of life in the day, help our loved ones understand us that much more than their interpretation of the kind of person we are.

This memorabilia, in my opinion shall always be cherished and taken care of, for long after we are gone, we shall be remembered by what we have recorded of ourselves; Not our failures, but the proof of our victories that we choose to capture in timeless little pieces of print.