I have a horror of them---and their modern cousins, the
family videocassettes. I keep away from them as much as I can, but often
without success. They are such a social epidemic currently that you just cannot
escape them. Indeed, I have secretly black listed some of my friends and
relatives on this score and I avoid them. Let me tell you why.
It all starts when there is a wedding in a family. Even
while attending the ceremony, you can actually see it coming, judging from the
diabolic enthusiasm of the photographer at every stage of the solemn occasion.
He is made much of and people treat him with undeserved respect. Naturally he
behaves like a tyrant and everyone obeys him. He shoves people and asks them to
make way for him and for his infernal tangle of wires. For group photographs,
he has the rudeness to ask you to step aside because “you don’t quite fit in”,
and he may ask you to nestle up to a person with whom you don’t like to be
photographed. He goads the bridegroom and the bride to smile while the couple
goes round the sacred fire, just when the smoke is actually getting into their
eyes and nostrils and they would give anything to run away from the scene. I
have known a pitiless photographer make the couple go round the sacred fire
several times more than the prescribed seven times, simply because he feels
that the earlier picture would not be good enough.
Each visiting guest must find a place in the wedding album
and the cassette. So the hapless couple is made to stand up and sit down for
photographs with different guest combinations, in the hot glare of the
floodlights. All this while the family brats dart in and out of the center
stage, uninvited. Not one soul thinks of the possibility that this is exactly
the time that the young couple would like to be left alone to coo sweet
nothings in each other’s ears.
Then the photographer’s choice of the close-ups is simply
in bad taste. The camera zooms on the jewelry put on by the bride and the lady
guests. The former, I suspect is for the posterity to know what ornaments the
bride’s parents gifted her. But the more inelegant zoom-ups are on the
well-laid dinner tables, lingering long on the culinary preparations. This
could only be to enable the subsequent viewers to make out if the pulao had
raisins or cashews and to count how many dessert options had been provided in
the menu.
A few weeks later, misfortune strikes the family friends
who innocuously accept the bride’s parents’ invitation for dinner. They have to
witness the full length of the 180 minutes of the videocassette. Before this,
heavy photo albums are dumped in their lap while the soup is being warmed up.
And in case they think they can quietly skip many of the photos, the hosts are
there to provide a running commentary and to ensure that nothing is missed. At
the time of viewing the Bidaai photographs, tender emotions prevail, voices
quiver, and the guests are expected to show appropriate response. They have no
way of cutting short the ritual because, as a rule, dinner is served after the
albums have been duly seen.
And this is not the end of the torment for the family
friends. One or two years later, their wrong instincts impel them into ringing
up the elderly couple to politely enquire after them. This time they are given
the good news that the couple has become grandparents, the natural outcome of
the wedding that they had attended. Indeed, why do the friends not come down
for dinner so that they can be given “all the details”? And the friends walk
into a carefully laid trap. This time the heavy photo albums contain the photos
of the newly born from all conceivable angles and in all kinds of coverings and
the absence of them. Once again tenderness prevails. Prudence demands that the
guests punctuate their reactions with “Oohs”, “Aahs” and “How cute!” if
goodwill is to continue. Now I have always held that all infants look rather
plain during the first few weeks of their life. But womenfolk think
differently. They can not only get into the correct responses but also manage
to discern a distinct similarity between the facial features of the infant and
one of its parents or grandparents or some close relative. Once I decided to
imitate my wife and ventured a remark that the nose of the infant resembled
that of one of the close relatives, little realizing that the relative in
question was not quite the favourite of the elderly couple due to a family
litigation. This had the immediate effect of my receiving a vigorous sideward
dig in the ribs from my wife, apart from the long-term consequence of frosting
of relations with the host family. I have since learnt to keep my peace at such
times.
Remarkably, the “official” albums and cassettes are no
less painful by any standards. These purport to cover the private glory of
senior officials at public expense. Prize distributions, inaugurations,
speeches, and meetings are sample excuses for this patronage of the photo
industry. The end product could be album or albums, in which case they adore
the centerpieces of the well-furnished office room of the senior official. It
could also be a videocassette kept handy by the side of the cassette player. It
is presumed that any and every casual visitor to the official has time to spare
and is greatly interested in the album and the cassette. Recently, my friend
whom I visited in his office room asked me to busy myself with one such album
while he engrossed himself with the affairs of the state. This was bad enough.
But he later ordered some tea for me and as a quid pro quo, got the
videocassette screening started on the nearby TV. He further rubbed salt on the
wound by muttering, “Hope you don’t mind. Now that you have retired, I am sure
you have a lot of time!” He ignored to ask me if I had the inclination.