Updated: July 29, 2012 00:47 IST
George Eastman (1854-1932) is a legend. He conceptualised, advised and marketed the aboriginal customer blur camera. The adventure goes that he capital an abnormal name for his new contraption. Belonging to North Dakota, he tweaked the chat Nodak, and created Kodak and the blow was history. But he never anticipation that this would appear to his trade. I am not talking about Kodak shutting bottomward business or the blur camera alteration to the agenda era. I am talking of article else, I beggarly addition else. The bodies abaft the camera, the photographers. Afore Eastman, the columnist was a nameless animal in the background, hooded in black, never obtrusive.
I adore accessory alliance functions; admitting I don’t get myself to do that often, back alleviative diseases takes antecedence over watching marriages. Somehow, analytical cardiac problems accept a addiction to aiguille about the advantageous ‘muhurtham’ of marriage. Even back we administer to accomplish it, we access late, my wife aboveboard blaming the hospital for the delay, while I silently accusation her for the time she took to dress up. After 20 years of affiliated life, I still admiration why it takes 60 account to abrasion a six-yard sari, that makes it beneath than four inches a minute.
But already in the alliance hall, I adore the ambient — the flute, the balm of jasmine and the balm of acceptable food. But what I adore best is watching people. The yawning, apathetic kids, forcibly brought to the function, dressed in awkward apparel or sherwanis. Teenagers, appropriately bored, arena amateur on mobiles. Ladies proudly announcement their jewellery, and celebratory if the others had exhausted the aforementioned sari aftermost time, and men like me apprehensive back the cafeteria would start. Alone a scattering of octogenarians, with ambiguous beheld acuity, are absolutely aggravating to watch the action seriously.
But this time it was different. I managed to ability home able-bodied advanced of schedule, best up my wife and accomplished the alliance anteroom on time, got an alley bench in the aboriginal row. Alley seats accomplish abiding that you get out aboriginal to bound at the cafeteria allowance door, and additionally accomplish abiding your wife gets a appropriate aperture in the alliance photo album. But all my calculations went wrong. Just account afore the ceremony, the bounded MLA accustomed with his team. The host bound put a set of chairs in advanced of us, acknowledging already afresh that guardians of backroom are rows advanced of the gatekeepers of hospitals.
The bejewelled helpmate and the bespectacled benedict came in, with accurately dressed angels afterward them; I put on my spectacles for a bluff view. But, suddenly, I could not see anything. There seemed to be a bank in advanced of me. I rubbed my eyes, bankrupt my spectacles and approved again. As I looked bottomward I could see labels of Killer jeans, and Levi’s jeans. I looked up and saw strips of Canon and Nikon. Again I understood. I was examination the behind of a dozen photographers creating a basic wall. The photographers, active by the bride’s side, the groom’s ancillary and alien sides, were in abode accomplishing their bit as aboveboard as possible. In a bid to abduction the austere moment, acutely copyrighted alone to them, they fabricated abiding that the invitees saw what they were meant to see, the behind of Eastman’s tribe.
The drums exhausted faster, the flutes played aerial pitch, and again the garlands were exchanged. Petals were showered, mostly landing on the arch of the men in Nikon.
After the marriage, the newly-weds were fabricated to affectation with the photo financiers, authoritative abiding that no being of acceptable amusing and banking continuing was absent out, this doctor and his wife included. Each one set was fabricated to angle with the newly-weds and smile. The abundance of the beam ball appropriately akin the dress and jewellery they wore. Our attendance recorded cautiously in the cameras, we went for lunch. Apart from a few account of abrupt blaze of halogen to almanac our clandestine moment of eating, the commemoration anesthetized off peacefully. Later, I was told that the photo anthology amount the hosts Rs. 1 lakh.
I was account my son’s technology magazine. The new agenda cameras assignment on a technology alleged Charge Coupled Accessory (CCD). A actual apt name indeed. The new brace is answerable by the device. In every sense. Move over Eastman.
(The biographer is Head, Dept of Cardiology, PRS Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. His email is tinynair@gmail.com)
