Smile please

First, let us agree that photographs are magic. They allow us to freeze time, to go back, remember what we were, what we had hoped to be. Once upon a time, our grandparents believed that photographs were powerful, they could reduce lifetimes, steal souls, alter destinies. They were serious as they faced cameras, knowing that every inch of their faces would be scrutinised long after they were gone, to be aligned with who we thought they were, who they should be.

That old photo album hidden away in the house you grew up in is embarrassing because it reveals a part of you that you have tried to forget over the years. Your appalling posture, that twist of hair that you thought looked awesome but really just looked silly, the hands and feet you didn’t know what to do with. Photographs help you understand that life is a slow process of resolving all the conflicts of your heart, of learning to love the person you once were, the person you are now.

What is harder to do still, is to learn to love others. Especially when others make you look at pictures of their vacations. As you get older, you will be forced to look at more and more photographs of people you do not really know or like, for that matter. You will have no choice; you will have to be brave and enthusiastic.

You will learn that some people like to go on pilgrimages where they see nine temples in three days (all the temples will look the same but you will not tell them this). You will see photographs of people who travel to Switzerland as part of large tour groups while wearing name tags and you will not judge them for taking so many pictures from inside their tour bus. You will be faced with evidence of people doing things that are incomprehensible to you — jumping off cliffs, getting fake tattoos and taking pictures of cocktails instead of downing them. Through all this you must be patient and remind yourself that all sorts of people make up this world.

Life will have you look at more photographs of honeymooners than you will know what to do with. You will register the awkwardness of arms around still strange shoulders and the effort of looking good for the people who will look at these pictures later. You will see photographs of newly married colleagues seated on unhappy elephants, camels, feeding monkeys and wearing rented tribal costumes. You must overcome your discomfort and try and understand this impulse that makes the guy from accounting share these pictures with you and the rest of the world. He wants you to know that he is not just the guy in accounting, he is a person, with a beating heart, with a blushing bride, who will learn to love him.

Today the photographs we see are curated perfection, flattering angles and predictable spontaneity. Accordingly, it is easy to hate half-strangers and their perfect vacation pictures. This is exactly when we have to pause and think of the alternative album of the deleted that exists in a parallel universe, suspended in a state of displacement. It is a fat album that has a bright yellow rose on the cover with the words Sweet Memories. The photos are shaky and sometimes the people in them look bored, hungry, tired and ready to go home. They will be touchingly human and even though you don’t want to, you will find space in your heart to learn to love them too. It is nothing less than magic.

Snigdha Manickavel is a Hyderabad-based writer