G to the C

While looking at one of my Picasa album photos today, I saw my nephew in one of the pictures, standing besides a table covered with a white plain table-cloth, on which the creases due to folding of the cloth were still prominent even after several failed attempts of removing it by stretching the cloth across the table and by placing a shiny birthday hat on one side and a bouquet on the other, and placing a guitar shaped cake right in the middle of the table to hide the most of those wrinkles. I found my nephew standing on one side of the table, staring at his 5th year birthday cake, with a birthday hat on his head and waiting patiently for the candles to be lit, so he can blow them off and get some cake to eat.Looking at this picture, I was suddenly taken to the picture in my mind, when I was the one standing beside that table with same wrinkled table cloth, and same guitar shaped cake, and staring at the cake exactly the way my nephew is now, and not knowing who else was there at the moment, because the only face in the picture would be either me or some other kid about the same height as I was at that time.  All adults in the vicinity are only visible up to their waists; because of the angle the picture was taken. That’s all it was, a picture, because I have no memory of that moment itself, I saw myself in this family photo album, on my brother’s birthday, staring at his cake, and thinking when would I get a piece of it. I say that it was my brother’s birthday because the picture is in his birthday album and not mine. May be it was misplaced and put in that album. I would never know. Come to think of it, I don’t even have my own birthday album until I was in 10^th standard! I knew there was something I missed all those years, just couldn’t quite put my finger on it! Ah well!It’s a funny feeling how pictures become memories as time passes and one forgets the moment but remembers the pictures and how things must have happened through those pictures. Memories are controlled by pictures!!

I wonder how people remembered things when there were no cameras. Did Lord Rama have to stand by his guitar shaped birthday cake for 5 hours for a painter to paint a picture of him? (Did they have guitars at that time? Did they have birthday cakes at that time?) Probably not! Then how did he remember all those things? Oh wait, he had Valmiki to write each and every moment of his life in a book, which we now call the Ramayana. All he had to do was to go back and read it. But I am sure even the great Valmiki forgot to write about the wrinkles on the table-cloth. (Did they have table-cloths?)