happiness and food

I love looking at old pictures for one big reason – it takes me back to the time when it was clicked, people, that wonderful day, and what not! It kind of unfolds a story and even years later the story doesn’t change. The story of this picture is the first one in a series of three and though I cannot tell you readers about when the rest two are going to be published, I promise that there will be two more.

I was born in the 80s and those times were very different. As I look around the new generation children I observe that their games, interactions, mannerisms are way different than what used to be ours. Birthday celebrations used to be a big thing when I was growing up and this picture is that of a birthday party I attended. This picture has me in green, my brother, friends and an aunt I admire.

Thinking of birthdays, what comes to my mind is how we were allowed to wear our favorite dress to school and that day used to be a special no-uniform day. Every other classmate would be curious to know who gets to go along with the birthday kid to offer candies/sweets to teachers. For the other kid, this use to be a criterion to know who is whose best friend. It was also a measure of popularity. I remember planning my birthday at school by thinking what candy papa needs to get from the store, which friend I will go with to distribute sweets, start from which class and then changing the plan based on any random reason. During the entire day, there would be wishes pouring in from all corners, at home – relatives and guests and then the evening would be a party with just friends invited.

Home-made cake, sweets, a variety of snacks and lots of gifts and return gifts! What a day! Whether attending or hosting a birthday party, the dress was chosen carefully. You know why? Pictures would be clicked and yes a maximum of 36 shots in one camera roll. So, birthday moments were carefully selected and then the camera was taken to the photographer who would carefully pull out the roll and take another week to develop positives. Those were the days!

For this post, I opened an old virtual photo album and I have tried to capture something about this one picture above – yes, it is a snapshot story