By: Ganesh Saili
Prowl around in the post-1990s liberalisation in Landour to find that driving has replaced walking. In the bazaar, you will feel like you are the filling in a sandwich as vehicles squeeze you between the road and shops.
‘Getting to your home is like doing the Monte Carlo Rally!’ says Hugh Gantzer, travel writer, as he leaves his car parked on Bakery Hill, preferring to walk the last bit.
The ‘credit’, for want of a better word, for bringing the first rumble of wheels up our slopes goes to a certain Dr Chapman in the 1960s. He was a proficient surgeon at our Mission Hospital, who forced his four-wheel-drive Willys Jeep up a track built originally for rickshaws and dandies. Of course, in his wake followed today’s hordes, and pedestrians were doomed forever.
Why complain? All around me, the old order rings in the new. To dust off that cliché – ‘Time and Tide wait for no man’ – and you don’t have to be a genius to know that the Great Indian Middle Class has arrived.
Driving up the zigzag road from Dehra, I saw innumerable Maggi Points cheek by jowl with love nests of varying degrees of tawdriness. These are rented out by the hour.
‘Give me a senior citizen discount!’ Deepak Vaidya, argues with the owner.
Above me loom the sunburnt cliffs of Chunakhala, below Oak Grove School, where the acclaimed photographer Samuel Bourne passed through in the monsoon of 1866, nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. His images are an invaluable record of those days. Recently, in the same area, two youngsters slipped down a defile to become the first victims of the siren songs of the selfie.
Ah! Our early self-portraits were in a mirror, taken with a bellows camera. Later, we would dash to get into the frame, ears cocked for the angry cobra-like hiss of the timer. Nowadays, every kid seems to have a smartphone with a selfie stick and myriad enhancement filters; images taken are instantly shared on social media.
I’ve always wondered why folks pucker their lips to pout in selfies.
For answers, I turn to friends in their extreme youth. Confusion reigns:
‘Celebrities do it all the time!’
‘It’s the fashion nowadays.’
‘It is sexy! Like a flying kiss!’
‘It got a more sensual meaning!’
‘Forget it! When in doubt – pout!’ laughs Nishu, the pretty girl. ‘Hides my double chin.’
Click! Upload! Celebrate! You are one of a million others doing it on the Net daily. The flip side is that smartphones have revived, by the Kiss of Life as it were, the endangered world of photography.
There was a time in the Twilight Zone or the Stone Age when we loaded, exposed, and processed films.
‘For survival, you need a six-to-one ratio!’ advised my mentor, the Australian Raymond Louis Steiner.
One time I mailed a couple of rolls of exposed film to the dhobi-ghat (as we used to call the processing lab) on Veer Savarkar Marg, Mumbai.
Back they came like a bad coin, stamped ‘Return To Sender: Address Unknown!’ The lab had moved.
Around this time came Elwyn Chamberlain. He was our author-in-residence, having written best-sellers like Gates of Fire and Thus Spake the Thunder. Wintering in Greece, he was returning a month later. With optimism, I gave him the film. That too came back.
‘The lab closed down!’ he said impishly. ‘But don’t look so glum, Ganesh! Sam, our son, leaves for Rochester next month; he’ll take them to the Kodak lab there.’
He did. And thankfully, the developed images came home.
Knowing I was not cut in the same matrix as Scott of Antarctica, I capitulated, swearing not to touch Kodachrome film again. Although it had vibrant colours, at the end of the day, it was too much trouble.
‘Is it all over then for the big brand names of our analogue days?’ I asked Manu Bahuguna, the founder of photoindia.com.
‘Precisely!’ he said, adding: ‘They’re nothing but fashion statements nowadays.’
Take it or leave it, the advent of digital photography has levelled the playing field.
Acchay din, at least for photography, have arrived.
Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.
