My Camera

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 When I began working as a correspondent ( back in late 2000s) for a print publication, I did not have a camera. Since my reporting did not really require many pictures, I managed without one.

Somehow, after years of saving, I managed to buy a Canon camera. To be honest, I had very little idea about the technology. I took the help of a few friends in choosing one, and we went all the way to Connaught Place in New Delhi to buy it.

It was such a wonderful feeling—a sense of pride.

After the purchase, as I began carrying the camera around, I remember a friend—not really a friend anymore—saying, “Why don’t you buy a good mobile phone? You can use the camera on it as well.”

Indeed, the camera had cost me around ₹35,000. That was a lot of money for me at the time.

But that particular friend did not realise, nor could she understand, what it meant to own a camera as a struggling journalist. I don’t blame her.

In fact, eventually, I too began using my mobile phone to take pictures. Slowly, after about five years, the Canon camera never really got an opportunity to come out of the closet.

Yes, mobile phones have replaced cameras in many ways.

Nevertheless, I still have an emotional connection with my camera. It gave me a sense of pride at a time when I was struggling to establish myself as a journalist. It still does today.

And now, whenever I look inside my cupboard, I feel a strong urge to take it out and perhaps use it again—even if it is only for my own emotional and mental satisfaction.

Perhaps that is what some objects become over time: more than possessions, they become fragments of memory.






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