The Unfinished Album

Photo Album – an outdated, yet a common  household item.

Lying in a corner or coffee table, it does not hold much fancy of the owner on most days. Then there are days when we are nostalgic, and that’s when the album spreads its charm. The album which had chronicled a period or event of our lives  makes the pictures come to life. Transporting us back to the event help us relive the moment. One glance, and every small detail which was clouded by day to day tardiness starts to get clearer. Once again we are in the magic of the moment… birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, holding the baby for first time, baby’s first steps, first day to school… oh so many, many events… this ordinary item holds it all. It contains within itself a story.  As I am writing this, I realize it is both like a book, and the easiest form of time travel!

If you are wondering  why this sudden respect for this mundane item? Well, its because something happened today. I was visiting a friend and my little girl, in her exploratory whirl, pulled out a beautiful album and handed it to me. Curious to get peep into my her life,  kind of excited to know which event will jump out of the pages, I opened it immediately. I opened from somewhere in the middle, expecting it to be filled in. But what came next was beyond my expectation. I did get my story… but it wasn’t from the owner… it was the album itself which told it. The tale had no words, but the story was so strong that I could not avoid it.

As i had mentioned earlier, I opened the album from the middle… and found the slots empty. I turned some more, towards the beginning,  still no sign of any photos. Only the silvery glimmer of the empty slots, never used, never filled. The album cover didn’t look new — it had a yellowish sheen  and the corners were blunt too… and looked used. This made me even more curious and I kept turning till I reached the one and only photograph of the whole album. The moment I laid my eyes on that photo, my heart began to fill with incredible sorrow. The tale began to spin itself all around me.

It was a picture of a birthday party celebrated many, many years ago. Among the usual party setting stood a beautiful woman holding a child about 2 years old. Both of them wore big smiles-smiles which reflected the pure happiness and delight of having each other. There was heaps of warmth, gratitude, innocence, security. The picture had captured one of those moments which we wish to make the time freeze at that moment and live that particular moment for the rest of our lives. Because of all these qualities, this otherwise ordinary picture became one of the most beautiful picture i have ever seen in my life. There was no picture after it because I knew my friend lost her mother soon after that.  No words spoken… no eye contact… I knew the album was empty because what she went through after that, isn’t something anyone would like to be reminded of. There must have been so many stories… some prizes won in school, some plays or dance performances, so many festivals, so many more birthdays,  graduation… the empty slots screamed out even those stories. With her mother, she had lost the security, the warmth and selfless love only a mother reserves for the child. No wonder this picture comprised the entire shortened childhood of hers.

The rest of the album told the story of her emptiness and pain in her heart, which she masks so well beneath her cheerful countenance. That one day of fun and glee of her second birthday portrayed in that picture is the only memory she cherishes. I do not know if she has memory of the rest of the day or its just the picture. But I know that this picture she looks at so often, is everything she would like to get back again. And for her sake I said a silent prayer, may she have another album much bigger and fatter than this. And that album must not have a single empty slot…