photographs!

A superstition I read - its unlucky to leave photo frames empty. We now have two frames lying around unused. I suppose for the next decade or so I need not enter myself in any raffle draw with hopes of winning the grand prize. Madam luck has all but packed her bags and proclaimed her departure. She is just hanging on by the last centimeter of my severed sixth finger. But in spite of this I know that the picture frames will remain empty far into the unseen future.

Its not for lack of photographs that the frames are gathering dust. The simple problem is that I hate looking at myself in photos. Till the age of five or six I suppose I liked myself, all my baby pictures are cute and more importantly I seem to have enjoyed smiling in those days. After six years of existence my photos stopped smiling. I suppose a couple of strategical missing tooth might have been the reason for the general funeral demeanor. My tooth did grow back, but not my smile as by then it was not prudent to smile anymore. My teeth outdid themselves in comparison with my lack of growth length or height wise. But of my teeth saga we will digress later.

So I progressed unsmiling wading my way through portraits and landscapes at times solo, at times lost in a large group. Beaches, parks I posed everywhere smiling rarely. Each time I could not bear to look at the snap for more than a second before I pushed the picture away. I would regularly hide away my passport snaps and get new ones in the hope that the next dozen reproductions of my features will turn out to be better than the countless previous ones. But how ever much I comb my hair, powder my face, smile or not smile I would run out the photo shop covering my head in shame. And it continues like so to this day.

 Someone who hates looking at her pictures by natural conclusion should not like look at herself in the mirror as well. But as far back as I can remember whenever I look in the mirror I see only a part of my face. And I am more than happy with small dissected  portions of my face. The whole perimeter of my face never registers. More often than not I tuck a wayward strand of hair behind my ear, flatten my misshapen eyebrows if they are unruly and I walk away happy with myself.

 All of photography nightmares exploded on my wedding day. In search of creativity(not mine) my very expensive photographer had me hugging a coconut tree and gazing dreamily into a distance. No visions of a happily married future life lit up my eyes as he envisioned. I can still recollect the amused smile of a scooter walah passing by. I suffered miserably that day and later when he happily delivered a full page close up version of me hugging the tree as part of my wedding album. If there was an foot of earth that I could call mine, I would have buried my album then and there. But there isn't and I do the next best thing, ignore it. My friends ask for my wedding pictures and I assure them I will send them the link by mail as the album is at home, but it never gets sent.

 The icing on the cake was that one day in Trivandrum when I went to get my passport photo taken. I was ushered in and asked to freshen up if needed. I took great pains and straightened my eyebrows so that they resembled each other and sat facing the camera. The guy fiddled with his cam for a while, made me tilt my head an infinitesimally small millimeter and clicked. Nothing happened. No flash, no click no nothing. Before I could position my head back to my comfortable tilt he said lets try once more and clicked again. No response from the camera forthcoming, he removed the cam and started trying to figure out what was wrong. A couple of adjustments and he was ready again but the camera wouldn't budge. Each time he failed I lost a little more of  the good humor that I stock up when I go have my picture taken. I sat there as a guinea pig for his seven failed attempts when finally at the eighth attempt his camera flashed and one week later I found myself looking into a packet of a dozen very angry looking Lakshmi's with one eyebrow raised. I stuck those pictures on all my forms anyways.

 And so amongst empty walls and dusty picture frames I live happily ever after.