Smells & Sounds

Do photographs take you back in time?

Oh! They do take me back a few steps, i.e., to when I was looking at them, perhaps with some friend? Memory rewinds to a few particular points in time, instantly I remember what jokes we cracked about it while we looked at the snap. But it never takes me as far back as when the snap was actually taken! Memories were created when the artifact was unchanged, just the way it now is, not when it was created.

Neither faces nor places remain the same, enough, to evoke memories. Of course, certain objects that we took to be fixtures, become prominent by their absence, & open a floodgate of memories of ‘have-beens’. A tree that used to be, (and obviously has been hacked), a window you used to stall your bike below, (which has disappeared behind another construction), the little shop which sold erasers & sharpeners (where now stands a rose garden) make you aware of a living & aching hole in your chest.
What reminds me of happy times, and in its full glory, are two things, that never change, Smells and music.
There’s this particular hindi movie song. Every time I hear it, & immediately back in the computer room of my Management School, Smitha’s system playing the song in the row behind me… I try to hold on to it for as many moments as possible, I know it no longer exists. Still, I can still experience it once more, for a few moments, with so much resources as a song. Thank God for small favours.