Photograph

No photograph of mine above the age of seven shows me as I am… I mean all my family photos, taken by an amateur photographer with a bad sense of light a.k.a dad and models with an ever changing poses of the latest carton on television- read me and my hapless bro, dressed and styled by another who was more than delighted to give back to her children all the torment inflicted by her own doting mother during the fragile, formative years of childhood innocence…

Photos of children dressed in bright colors in odd poses taken in an odd angle at the weirdest places- me and my bro inside a cupboard shelf remains an all time favorite. And the worst part comes when obscure relatives arrive, the pictures are produced with a flourish causing my and my hapless sibling to blush furiously.

I used to hate the days that my dad would pull out his camera and say the dreaded words : “Lets shoot some pictures!”. He would wait patiently for my mother to adorn my brother and myself with clothes that she considers cute… then we head to the spots my dad has scouted out for the shoot. Dad always made us smile- even though it was inadvertent, half the time, the pictures would be over exposed, the sun would make us squinty eyed and an unknown person would inadvertently step into the frame in the last minute. I never used to understand why my parents took so much pleasure in taking such photos and remained vehemently against any attempt to induce me to pose for them.

Its been a long time since then and my parents have moved along with the technology, a sony handy cam being their latest contribution to their hobby and lifelong pursuit. Yesterday, my brother took up one of the dusty albums, hidden in the deepest and darkest corner of the shelf and skimmed through its pages. Surprisingly there were a lot of incidents and places and people there whom we hadn’t thought of in a long time. After years of whining about my parents obsession with cameras I finally was enjoying the results, but I dare not tell my parents for fear they’ll take it as consent to pose for more :P