Okay, slightly expensive, but still. In the larger scheme of things, it cost me almost nothing, but it remains priceless.
Before I tell you what I’m talking about, a few years ago, one of my closest friends gifted me a polaroid camera for my birthday. I know what you’re thinking, isn’t the polaroid an extinct species. You’d think so. But alongside huge plastic spectacles, cycles, and Bernie Sanders, the polaroid joined a long line of ancient things that suddenly became cool again.
If you’re thinking, “Who the hell wants a camera that only clicks a few tiny photos and counts on an unlimited supply of film, batteries, and nostalgia to work?”, you would not be alone. That’s exactly what I thought when I first got it. And at a time when any of us today can click 27954 selfies before we click that perfect one, without a second thought to what a waste of memory that is, not to mention what a waste of time.
And it didn’t come cheap. Each 10-pack of film cost me 500 rupees! You could alternatively buy a 100-pack for 3500 rupees, which makes your wallet shed exactly 3 fewer tears as you click each next photo. Hey, I’m not saying it’s a scientific measurement process, the tears may be metaphorical, but the pain is real.
But as a side-effect of this, I started thinking more as I clicked each picture—“What am I clicking? Is it worth the cost of this film? Why is this camera baby pink?.” Anyways, what I’m saying is that somehow the process slowed down. It felt like life suddenly went from the indiscriminate AK47 photography of the smartphone to the good old days of the pistol that needed reloading after every six shots. Wait, is that why it’s called shooting photos? Sorry, I digress.
I suddenly found myself remembering and relating to the stories my father had told me about his old film camera, where you’d click 25-30 photos with no idea how they’d turn out until you took it to a studio to get “developed”. Every setting mattered, every click mattered, and it forced your skills to develop faster as well. Or get used to finding joy in a set of expensive photos way too bright or way too dark, or the worst, the completely washed out lot.
What have the devices of today brought us? With even just a smartphone, almost anyone can click photographs a hundred times better than even professional photographers even just a generation ago could imagine. With unlimited storage, we can click as many photos as we want before we get one right. And I don’t question for one minute the hugely democratising force that has been. People who could have never imagined becoming a photographer have been able to learn to click pictures that have reached and impacted the hearts of people around the world. And that is huge. We need tools like this to reach the hands of as many people as possible.
But I wonder if, in that process, we’ve lost something. In ubiquity, have we lost meaning? In unlimited memory, have we lost actual memories? In excess, have we lost value? And in all that philosophising, have I lost track of what I was talking about?
Polaroids, yes!
I became very selective about what pictures I clicked with this camera I got gifted. I started taking pictures of some of my closest friends. I got myself a calendar-style album to put these polaroids, and over the years, I’ve collected more than a hundred polaroids of the people that mean the most to me.
When I left university, I made a tiny little note for each of my friends, with an image of the polaroid of them. I started each of those notes with the same sentence, “We might not be in the same place from tomorrow, and live our lives in different parts of the world. But I want you to know that this photograph of you will travel with me wherever I go, and always find a place on my desk.”
This set of polaroids might not have cost me much, but will forever remain one of my prized possessions.
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