Old Family Photos
Back when, the entire family used to gather at my uncle’s place on Sundays. Over a cup of tea, we’d chat, laugh and pick on each other. We’d boo at cricket scores (those were dark days) and hiss at the politics. We’d dig out old stories and laugh even louder. The old stories were never new. We knew exactly what came next, but it didn’t matter, they were always just as funny as the first time, possibly even more, enhanced as they were with every telling. I don’t know when those Sunday visits died out. It happened gradually, and it happened for a number of reasons: college, work, relocations, squabbles, new priorities, stuff. I didn’t realize when and how those Sundays dropped out of my routine; I didn’t realize how much I missed them, not till my last visit home.
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One of my cousin’s, back home after years, was clearing out the loft space above the kitchen when he rediscovered some old family photos – photos of us as kids, in pigtails, braces and terrible clothes; photos of our parents, slimmer, younger, elegant and chic; photos of uncles and aunts when they were just kids, eyes sparkling with excitement for things to come; photos of all our histories – the conversations practically come wafting out; photos that are real, that tell the whole truth, untouched as they are by the alternative world of post processing and airbrushing. He decided to put together an album, a family project in time for Diwali.
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The whole family is here – well almost. Whoever is in town, and back home from work, is here. In Mumbai, that’s more than you can ask for on a week day. My aunt is in the kitchen, stirring a ladle in a large aluminium pot, declining any help because ‘everything is done’. Tumblers of hot ginger tea are passed around. The rain hits against the living room windows, and inside the laugher fills up around the album. The album’s heavy cover feels as light as a feather as we go back to those days in the old apartments, reliving them over and over again. One memory leads to another and that leads us to what happened yesterday, which takes us back thirty odd years, which reminds someone of what happen much before that, which brings us back to my cousin’s living room, laughing and arguing and laughing even harder. It feels like the old days again.
Like this:
Postcard Series – Paris
I’m stepping into a picture that is made of paper and ink. I walk amidst the dusty aisles, running my fingertips against titles, new and old. So many words in one tiny space; I soak them in one by one.
Paris, July 2010
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I’ve taken to writing (myself) postcards when travelling. I’ve this image in my head, of me, thirty-forty years down the line, going through stacks of yellowing postcards, and thinking about the good old days, a cup of hot chai in hand.
Keeping Warm in Stockholm
It’s pitch dark outside, even though it’s barely 3:30 in the afternoon. I am bitterly cold. My heavy scarf feels like an amateur in this Scandinavian winter. My ears are covered and my coat collar is stiff, pulled all the way up to keep the cold out. It doesn’t work. I feel the ice settle down in my chest, creeping through the gaps and falling in place with a painful thud.
“You’re lucky, it’s still a warm winter,” the lady behind the counter tells me as she wraps my wooden bookmark in a soft white envelope with the Swedish flag, “usually by this time, we are much much colder, under snow.”
I’ve been walking around Stockholm’s old town, Gamla Stan, all day, conflicted: should I leave my hands stuffed in my coat pockets, or do I pull them out, along with my camera, to take pictures? To keep warm I walk into the stores that line the old quarters. I am not picky. When I feel my face is about to fall off, I walk into the nearest one. As a result, I’ve spent a fair bit of today with reindeer and moose masquerading as kitchen towels, fridge magnets and candle stands, and the Swedish Royal family, smiling from cups, caps and cards.
What I’d really like to do is step into one of the cosy candle-lit restaurants serving lunch. The candles stand right by the window, the flames are sturdy, strong, tempting the cold to come in and try something warm. But I’ve never learned how to squeeze in a second lunch, so I settle for a compromise. I go for fika.
Fika, as I gather, is a sort of Swedish mix between high tea and coffee break. It involves something warm in a mug and something sweet on a plate. And given the weather, they are both had in a warm, comfy place. So I fika.
I fika, I take a photo, I look at plastic moose. I fika, I take a photo, I look at reindeer hangers.
I try the tea in a kitschy cafe, with a cinnamon bun, a Kanelbulle - I think it’s called. In an airy cottage-type cafe, I opt for black coffee with a gigantic fruit studded muffin. In the third, I sit on a bench with a pastry and a glass of water. In each, I open my guidebook, and plot tomorrow in Stockholm.
Like this:
Dwarfed by History
This gallery contains 6 photos.
History. The word has a looming quality to it. Towering, imposing, delicately impossible, and yet so real. Structures, elements that have been around longer than I can count. The numbers get smaller, buoyed up and further distanced by acronyms, BC and AD – tiny specks of years of landmark achievement and artistry, all towering, imposing, delicately impossible, and [...]
