The other day I bumped into her, quite by chance. She gave me a full bodied warm hug and screamy out "Hey, great to see you." To a bystander, she sounded as if she was seeing me after 7 years (in Tibet or otherwise :-)).
Released from her vice like bear hug( which indeed did get my oxytoxin(s) running high)....I was genuinely happy to see her and smilingly complimented her on her gorgeous looks. (Now I rarely can bring myself to call a lady beautiful unless she is truly a 24 hr Goddess...but more on that later...Gorgeous though, is a compliment I often pay to people who are looking far better than they usually do :-). If she ever reads this, she shall kill me.)
A few minutes of ball talk followed, post which she said, "Would you mind teaching my daughter photography?". From the little I knew of her daughter, she must have been all of 6-7. Unprepared and not expecting this line of conversation, I lazily hummed "Hmmm...".
As she continued to speak, her little angel ambled in from behind her, stuck on the IPhone, and playing some loud and colorful first-person game.
I called out to her and said "sweetheart, would you really want to learn photography?". She did not look up, but she nodded her head.
The mother meanwhile got a call on her own cell (different from the IPhone). She proceeded to talk for a good few minutes. She then came back to my gaze and said "Where were we?".
We did some more moonlighting talk, before I saw her car come alongside. She perfunctorily hugged me again, jumped in tow, with her bags and the daughter.
As the car drove into the horizon, turning into a little red dot, I realized that I had not said what I intended to say. To capture the world on a film (or CMOS), we only need to pause. We need to still the mind. We first need to make time for the world, and finally, we need to kill the "busyness" of our everyday modern urban life.
Would I still teach the little darling photography? Of course I would. Would the little girl ever be a Henri Silberman, or a Vivian Maier, of course she could be. Our capacity for greatness is usually not bound.
But whatever she does, wherever she eventually reaches, she would twice as good as that - if only she could just jump of that bloody hazy treadmill.
Released from her vice like bear hug( which indeed did get my oxytoxin(s) running high)....I was genuinely happy to see her and smilingly complimented her on her gorgeous looks. (Now I rarely can bring myself to call a lady beautiful unless she is truly a 24 hr Goddess...but more on that later...Gorgeous though, is a compliment I often pay to people who are looking far better than they usually do :-). If she ever reads this, she shall kill me.)
A few minutes of ball talk followed, post which she said, "Would you mind teaching my daughter photography?". From the little I knew of her daughter, she must have been all of 6-7. Unprepared and not expecting this line of conversation, I lazily hummed "Hmmm...".
As she continued to speak, her little angel ambled in from behind her, stuck on the IPhone, and playing some loud and colorful first-person game.
I called out to her and said "sweetheart, would you really want to learn photography?". She did not look up, but she nodded her head.
The mother meanwhile got a call on her own cell (different from the IPhone). She proceeded to talk for a good few minutes. She then came back to my gaze and said "Where were we?".
We did some more moonlighting talk, before I saw her car come alongside. She perfunctorily hugged me again, jumped in tow, with her bags and the daughter.
As the car drove into the horizon, turning into a little red dot, I realized that I had not said what I intended to say. To capture the world on a film (or CMOS), we only need to pause. We need to still the mind. We first need to make time for the world, and finally, we need to kill the "busyness" of our everyday modern urban life.
Would I still teach the little darling photography? Of course I would. Would the little girl ever be a Henri Silberman, or a Vivian Maier, of course she could be. Our capacity for greatness is usually not bound.
But whatever she does, wherever she eventually reaches, she would twice as good as that - if only she could just jump of that bloody hazy treadmill.
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