fromlifetowriting

[fromlifetowriting]

A picture in the sun

It's a short memory. I don't remember when it starts or when it ends. Well.. it ends when the picture gets clicked. I wasn't a shy kid. I liked getting my pictures clicked. I looked straight at the camera with whatever expression I was feeling at the moment. My father had a film camera. It broke when I was little so there aren't many pictures of me as a baby. Here and there my father got it fixed but it broke again. So we would take pictures without occasions whenever it got fixed. It was one such moment. I was wearing a baggy denim jeans with patchwork and something written on them that I don't remember with a collared shirt tucked into it. An outfit that I now wish I could have and I would wear it every chance I got. We lived in our village back then. Our house, a beauty, but we never realised it then. We had a kitchen with a sloping roof made out of something metal that we climbed on top of when playing games, wooden doors with iron bars, and windows covering 2 walls, one of which looked down to the courtyard with beautiful trees filled with flowers. We had a hand-pump each on the ground floor and first. My father was fond of plants, something I sort of inherited as I now look at the living room filled with indoor plants in our urban home. Then we had pots of different sizes lined outside the kitchen door. I remember a plant that I loved which we called mor-pankh(cockscomb), a pretty shade of red. My brothers were in their school uniforms, just back from school. My father said he'll click a picture and we got excited. The only patch of sunlight was on the kitchen door so we walked there and stood. I went into the kitchen and got some malai in a bowl and started eating it, trying to look uninterested. My father said come on now, lets take a photo. I replied, "Aise hi kheech do, mujhe malai khate hue". Click me like this while I'm eating, I said laughing. I took a spoonful of malai and posed eating it while my father clicked the photo of us, my brothers standing, one on each side of me, smiling and shy, while I smiled thinking I looked cool. I was 4 or 5 then and this is the only part I remember from that day. My mother is surprised I remember it because I was so young then, but I still remember the giggly feeling I had then. I miss my childhood home and that camera. And all those pictures without occasions.