On NOT being candid!

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
 Its loveliness increases; it will never
      Pass into nothingness;.....                      

                                                                        ---- John Keats                                        

 I often see people yawn at the very mention of poetry and I don’t blame them if they haven’t read the soulful melody that is the poetry of John Keats. The ‘thing of beauty’ that I am referring to, is a beautiful picture that sits atop my mantelpiece. Shot in the breathtakingly beautiful, fantastic locale of Gulmarg (Kashmir, India). Snow-capped mountains and trees in the backdrop, standing cheek-to-cheek with my husband, this picture’s ‘loveliness increases’ each time I look at it. It is beautiful not because how we look in it, this is not a self-aggrandizing web-log. It is about a moment in my life that is permanently 'captured'.

This photo of which I so fondly speak was shot by a total stranger for a paltry price. In fact, we had to be coerced into taking it in the first place! The place was abuzz with tourists, all keen to find a secluded, picture-perfect spot to go into their dream album. In pursuit of this elusive spot we had to shovel the knee-deep snow, so as to get that perfect backdrop.

The moment was posed for and shot in a hurry. Yet when I look at it, I conveniently forget the painstaking journey, the bargaining, the vendors trying to take advantage of my ‘tourist’ tag. I can remember it as (and only as) a blissful, exotic and dream-like adventure!

So how does this seemingly tedious feat turn into the renderings of Keats? When does the charade translate into reality? What is it about our memory that blows-up an ordinary polaroid into something surreal, into ‘something else’?

I think it is our innate desire to preserve ourselves. To have a ‘moment’ that may or may not exist actually, but stands in front of us in the form of a visual representation of everything we want it to be. And the wonderful way in which our memory works, editing the unwanted and inconvenient details, slowly but surely, the’moment’ in this very picture is as real as the next thing you see!

Is this what they call ‘looking at life with rose-tinted glasses’? Maybe. And what is the harm? The next time you take a picture, give it your best shot. It may not be candid but if you can remain 25 forever, I think the ‘tinted glasses’ are a great bargain ;)

----Urooj Fathima