To Buy or Not to Buy... is the question
It’s an existential debate; mind you… say if one has to capture the memories… which mode is better, Still-Camera or a Video-Camera.
It is as existential as the most confounding question that I ever faced… while reading the first few pages of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance”- to ride a motorcycle or a car while traveling… and not that I know how to drive either of them… Car, a wee bit… Motorcycle, tried my hand twice or thrice… but it opened a lot of other questions- whether to shoe string or do package tourism… whether to stay in resorts or backpackers den (or even better under the sky, as in Petra or Jerusalem… or so many other places, where I have traveled)… the moot question being – why do we travel at all?
Yeah! Why do we travel at all? Everyone has a different reason… some do it to break the monotony of their normal, claustrophobic lives… some do it for the heck of it… I travel because I love to travel… I feel emancipated while traveling… I feel good about myself while traveling. I feel that it is a life well lived… and yes traveling… not in the sense of moving along… I consider my stay in Kandahar… where I am hardly able to move, as traveling.
The other day I met Steve… a British national working as Political officer in UN… he is a treasure trove of information about this region… he has been in Kandahar for six years… I joked… Six years in Kandahar!!! It is a life wasted… but not really… someone asked me, why you relish this posting? I am not abnormal… I love my family… I love to play with my playful kids… I fear death and its shadows all around… but I love to GROW!
Back to the existential question … Still Camera or a Video Camera… it is a momentous question…
Still Camera often pales in front of the glamour of a handy cam… the slick advertising, which makes you wish… Ahhh! I had one… doesn’t it gives me a sense of having arrived in life… funnily, like a car, which my friends often tell me to purchase to justify my status or success (not that I ever count achievements as a meter of success of status… if at all my success is defined by the sense of liberalism and empathy I have discovered within myself… it is defined by people who love me… who confide in me… who must have met me only for few hours, to put together… and despite it consider me as a great friend and a great person to listen or talk to)
Back in 2006, when I first faced the epochal dilemma… (and yes I was facing it for the first time… as before it I never had money enough to buy a camera or a video camera…)… I went for a Still Camera… my first Still Camera (a digital one) was bought from the Balad market of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia… when I visited it on an official duty. I distinctly remember that I bought it from a Pakistani shop-owner… an affable gentleman who claimed that he had given me the best deal… and that I may return him the camera if I am able to procure it for a lesser price anywhere in the market. I tried but I couldn’t get a better deal in that humongous market…
Still camera opens up possibilities… so many that it assumes philosophical connotations… very very philosophical…
Despite its name, a Handy Cam is not very handy… it takes a lot of space… where as the Still Digital camera hardly takes up any space… that, to a traveler, opens up possibility of flexibility… of ease… of covering more distances more physically and metaphorically. Like when on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria… among the high rising ruins of Saint Simon… when I saw some villages and ruins at a distance… I remember how I walked down the cliff… with the camera in my pocket… almost risking my life… well, a handy cam wouldn’t have let me do it… for its bulkiness.
Or when in Siwa, Egypt, I walked atop the Salty marshes… and when at one of the places I was all but swallowed by the marshes… when I was sucked thigh deep into them… (And was still going down)… I wouldn’t have dared to walk into the dangerous confines with my one hand tied with a clumsy camera… I remember… how then… I remembered all the lessons to save myself from marshes… and crawled on my fours… to save myself… (With a Handy Cam, I would have to crawl on my three)... Someone asked me, why I at all went there… I told him… I learnt my lesson… never underestimate the forces of nature.
Life is made up of moments… it’s not a continuous narrative… it’s a collage of moments… some sweet, some bitter, but all memorable… like meeting Abdu in Hamah… like sitting with kids in Aleppo… like meeting with Homda in Al Qasr… like meeting with a friend for life in Petra… or meeting with that beautiful Japanese girl in Jerusalem… and all those moments need to be captured and not the narrative of it all… imagine if I had captured those moments through video… I am amused.
I look around… how many of us… actually look at the video… say of our marriages… not many… the magic of moments is lost in the narratives… do I need to be reminded that how clumsy I was looking in the ill fitted shervani… or do I need to be reminded the broad smile I had when I saw the bride coming towards me…
I think I need moments… like some others who need a narrative…
I always maintain… that a still camera travels with you… and you travel with a video camera.
I chose to be the central figure in the process… I chose a friend and not a prized possession… the same way I choose public transports over personal vehicle… shoe stringing over resorts… Sleeper Class over AC Class….
A few days ago, I bought a second Still Camera… for myself… and shot the eventful gathering on Deepawali.
It is as existential as the most confounding question that I ever faced… while reading the first few pages of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance”- to ride a motorcycle or a car while traveling… and not that I know how to drive either of them… Car, a wee bit… Motorcycle, tried my hand twice or thrice… but it opened a lot of other questions- whether to shoe string or do package tourism… whether to stay in resorts or backpackers den (or even better under the sky, as in Petra or Jerusalem… or so many other places, where I have traveled)… the moot question being – why do we travel at all?
Yeah! Why do we travel at all? Everyone has a different reason… some do it to break the monotony of their normal, claustrophobic lives… some do it for the heck of it… I travel because I love to travel… I feel emancipated while traveling… I feel good about myself while traveling. I feel that it is a life well lived… and yes traveling… not in the sense of moving along… I consider my stay in Kandahar… where I am hardly able to move, as traveling.
The other day I met Steve… a British national working as Political officer in UN… he is a treasure trove of information about this region… he has been in Kandahar for six years… I joked… Six years in Kandahar!!! It is a life wasted… but not really… someone asked me, why you relish this posting? I am not abnormal… I love my family… I love to play with my playful kids… I fear death and its shadows all around… but I love to GROW!
Back to the existential question … Still Camera or a Video Camera… it is a momentous question…
Still Camera often pales in front of the glamour of a handy cam… the slick advertising, which makes you wish… Ahhh! I had one… doesn’t it gives me a sense of having arrived in life… funnily, like a car, which my friends often tell me to purchase to justify my status or success (not that I ever count achievements as a meter of success of status… if at all my success is defined by the sense of liberalism and empathy I have discovered within myself… it is defined by people who love me… who confide in me… who must have met me only for few hours, to put together… and despite it consider me as a great friend and a great person to listen or talk to)
Back in 2006, when I first faced the epochal dilemma… (and yes I was facing it for the first time… as before it I never had money enough to buy a camera or a video camera…)… I went for a Still Camera… my first Still Camera (a digital one) was bought from the Balad market of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia… when I visited it on an official duty. I distinctly remember that I bought it from a Pakistani shop-owner… an affable gentleman who claimed that he had given me the best deal… and that I may return him the camera if I am able to procure it for a lesser price anywhere in the market. I tried but I couldn’t get a better deal in that humongous market…
Still camera opens up possibilities… so many that it assumes philosophical connotations… very very philosophical…
Despite its name, a Handy Cam is not very handy… it takes a lot of space… where as the Still Digital camera hardly takes up any space… that, to a traveler, opens up possibility of flexibility… of ease… of covering more distances more physically and metaphorically. Like when on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria… among the high rising ruins of Saint Simon… when I saw some villages and ruins at a distance… I remember how I walked down the cliff… with the camera in my pocket… almost risking my life… well, a handy cam wouldn’t have let me do it… for its bulkiness.
Or when in Siwa, Egypt, I walked atop the Salty marshes… and when at one of the places I was all but swallowed by the marshes… when I was sucked thigh deep into them… (And was still going down)… I wouldn’t have dared to walk into the dangerous confines with my one hand tied with a clumsy camera… I remember… how then… I remembered all the lessons to save myself from marshes… and crawled on my fours… to save myself… (With a Handy Cam, I would have to crawl on my three)... Someone asked me, why I at all went there… I told him… I learnt my lesson… never underestimate the forces of nature.
Life is made up of moments… it’s not a continuous narrative… it’s a collage of moments… some sweet, some bitter, but all memorable… like meeting Abdu in Hamah… like sitting with kids in Aleppo… like meeting with Homda in Al Qasr… like meeting with a friend for life in Petra… or meeting with that beautiful Japanese girl in Jerusalem… and all those moments need to be captured and not the narrative of it all… imagine if I had captured those moments through video… I am amused.
I look around… how many of us… actually look at the video… say of our marriages… not many… the magic of moments is lost in the narratives… do I need to be reminded that how clumsy I was looking in the ill fitted shervani… or do I need to be reminded the broad smile I had when I saw the bride coming towards me…
I think I need moments… like some others who need a narrative…
I always maintain… that a still camera travels with you… and you travel with a video camera.
I chose to be the central figure in the process… I chose a friend and not a prized possession… the same way I choose public transports over personal vehicle… shoe stringing over resorts… Sleeper Class over AC Class….
A few days ago, I bought a second Still Camera… for myself… and shot the eventful gathering on Deepawali.
3 comments:
Very thoughtful.....Buddhaprakash
I first bought a Handycam to capture the the movements of my kid.Then 3 years back bought a Digicam.I agree with you that now a days when I go out traveling, I prefer the Digicam (though sometimes the Handycam remains back in the hotel room), prefer traveling Sleeper class (but sometimes for the kids had to travel A/C if it is a overnight journey), take the local transport, eat local food and try to live a life as close to that of the locals.This is my way of "feeling" a new place than just "seeing".
@ Buddha- Thanks Buddy!!!
@ Subrat- Ditto :-)
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