Images

A few years ago I remember reading that one of the established photography companies - Fuji I think - was exiting the photo-film making business to concentrate on digital cameras.

No way - I thought - having till then been exposed to only the crudest digital cameras around - and computers where a 20 MB harddrive was considered colossal.

How quickly technology can change the rules of the game.

Images today are largely digital. I still have dreams of setting up a b/w darkroom at my parent's place in Shanti Kunj - but will anyone still be manufacturing photo-films - let alone b/w? Isn't it easier just to switch on the b/w mode on your camera?

The challenge now is the question of storage. With every event producing scores of images - all mysteriously hidden in virtual memory - how to keep track of them. Instead of an old biscuit tin box crammed full of photos - we now have various files, and how to find the one you want - when you want it?

Additional challenge - the frailty of computers. Last year our hard drive gave up the ghost. With it went all the pictures that we had of Enoch's birth. Every one of them. I tried and tried to retrieve them - and took the help of our friendly computer man - Richard Washington - too. No avail.

But hope springs eternal. Earlier this month I wrote to our good friend Dr. Bryan Sauer in the US. We had borrowed his digital camera for 2 weeks during Enoch's arrival in Feb of 2003. Would Bryan have any copies of the pics we had shot?

Amazingly the answer came as yes! And yesterday - thanks to broadband internet - the pics arrived. Here is one of them. Enoch - nestled in Sheba's arm - a few hours after he was born!

There are still hitches and lurches in the whole image storage bit. But what a miracle to have this cloud of pixels capture the very day of our son's birth. I had forgotten the reddish splotches on his face (as usual parents find their children unbearably beautiful) and the little bundle that he was.

As I put Enoch on the school bus this morning - I gave him a kiss and prayed for him. What a blessing to be a father - and what a blessing to have images to remind us of the road we have travelled so far.

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Added bonus:

Seeing a pic that we have never seen before - this shot of us as a family which Bryan must have taken! I have somehow embedded in my memory that Asha took some time to get to accept Enoch - which certainly is true - but this shot shows another angle to the story:

Whether Enoch is laughing or crying after receiving a kiss from his big sister is not clear from this shot though ...