A Noble Death

Over the last few days there were some pieces of news going around the world. To most it would have been of no consequence. But to me, they were symbols of things I held dear, slowly passing away. The first was about a company that was synonymous with photographic films facing possible bankruptcy. The other was about bookshops slowly bowing out giving way to online retailers.

When I was home for the Christmas vacations, Mom made me clean up the mess I had accumulated over the last ten years. From the loft things were falling off – I had even single brochure printed in BITS for any fest. I had all the EPC articles that were published during the seven semesters I had been on campus and I had a bag full of DOPY snaps.

As I held the snaps in my hand, I realized that they meant so much more to me than on my laptop. There was an album with my favourite snaps which I had taken to Pilani in my first year – the one with my grandma, the one where C, S and I were standing together in the school in our uniforms for the last time.

And there was one with the favourite snaps I had of Pilani. One of them was of the two of us on our cycles standing just outside the Gyn G gates, the other was the famous 185 SK snap with C and A, the other was the 201 SK snap of the three of us.

As I held them in my hand I realized they were perishable, they were fading away but they would last me a lifetime and holding them felt so much more than watching them flash past on my laptop.

DOPY as I knew it has changed with the advent of digital cameras. And slowly probably the concept of taking snaps during the festivals be passé as everyone’s parents would have given them phones which have cameras that can take decent pictures to be put up on Facebook! That’s what people take snaps these days for anyways.

But then I read this blog post about how important are those snaps and how important it is for those physical copies of the photographs and I realized how we love to hold on to our memories.

Visiting to bookstores and printing a photograph might slowly be dying out but they are dying a Noble death. They did what they were supposed to achieve and they have left us with glimpses of our past. And I know I probably can order a book home at a much lower price but till the day the last bookstore stands I shall always buy from there. It’s stupid but then every man has his quirks.