My Life 365 - Lost Innocence, Lost Memories

This post is super-special to me. I was trawling through the thousands of pictures I have kept aside that will form the core material for my 365 post-lets when I chanced upon this one. It wasn't in the set of travel pictures, but like I told you at the beginning of Life 365, there are going to be few rules and if there are rules, they will be broken some time or the other.

So this post is about a young man, whose serious eyes stare back at me from a sepia-toned photograph. I chanced upon it this time when I was at home in Kochi. Unlike my mother's family stories, that are amply corroborated by photographs lovingly preserved by my grandmother in an ancient album, Dad's childhood is rather like folklore - passed on strictly through word-of-mouth. But because he is a wonderful raconteur, who is himself in love with all the stories he narrates, he makes it compelling. I strongly feel that he joy that lights up his eyes as he talks about his growing years physically transforms him and gives me a glimpse of what a handful he must have been as a young boy. And through his words, I peek into his childhood. My grandfather, I believe was a stern man, his one photo that I have seen and that now hangs framed in my house matches Dad's description to a T. My grandmother has always looked like about a hundred years old (or maybe that is because I had an overactive imagination as a child). However no amount of the same imagination helps me conjure how she must have looked in her twenties. I guess Dad's family didn't believe in too many pictures or I don't know if any of his older siblings have any photos from those years that they don't believe in going over with us, the next generation.

Dad's childhood and adolescence were always hazy black and white reels of imagination that often moved through my head to the creaking accompaniment of a turning projector. I have visualised from his vivid descriptions the clothes that he wore, the little green stud he had in his ears as a child (he still has pierced ear lobes) and the really long shorts that were probably hand-me-downs from his brothers. To date, I don't know how he looked as a baby or a young boy of under ten. Dad's bonafide images that I carry in my memory begin on one fine day when he was a dashingly handsome man of thirty. The day he married Amma. I don't recollect the number of times I have pored over their wedding pictures and his handsome profile and Amma's demure presence by his side. But by then, he had the look of a worldly, wise man who knew how he was going to conquer the world. I have always been curious about the younger Dad...and that's just what I found, tucked away into a hidden corner of his wallet.

Now, I must confess, I love looking through his wallet to routinely check if he still carries pictures of my mom, me and my sister in it. While mom's picture is rarely moved, mine sometimes goes missing! This time, while I was checking all the hidden nooks of his purse was when I stumbled on the photo. And a freakingly familiar yet unfamiliar face looked back at me ( both sides of my family swear I am a carbon-copy of my father, perhaps that could account for the familiarity in parts too!).. I believe that is his picture taken in Standard Ten. I don't know where it has suddenly appeared from or how he laid his hands on it. Also, no luck with more of his baby pictures, but seeing Dad for the first time as an adolescent made me a bit sad, nostalgic sad.

There are pictures of my sister and I, at just about every stage of our lives. Some have been buried away never to be seen by anyone because we don't want to believe we went through awkward childhoods! Amma too has a fair number of pictures for me to piece together the rest. However, there are none of Dad. None to help me piece together more of his childhood. None of my grandfather in his lighter, less stern moments or my grandmother in her youth. They are all figments of my imagination, not people of flesh and blood, who lived and loved with the same intensity that I do.

So among the thousands and thousands of photographs that I have, stored manually, digitally and otherwise, this photo that I made a copy of with my phone camera is very dear to me. And by sealing it here with a blog-post, I am going to ensure that Dad's childhood also has a written record - it is not just word of mouth or coloured in my imagination alone.