A quick tale 199

This is him

This is him. It was taken in 1984. When he was applying for a passport. The office was going to send him to a conference in Paris in a couple of months and he needed a passport pretty soon. He went to have his photo clicked on a Tuesday morning. I asked him if he could wait until the following day as everyone knows Tuesdays are not auspicious. He chided me for being so superstitious and left for the studio. The photographer told him that he should be wearing something dark coloured and so he rushed home to change. He's wearing a deep blue coloured shirt but you wouldn't know that because it's a black and white photo. It cost him 20 rupees for 6 copies and an extra 4 rupees for the negative. I laughed when I first saw the photo because he looked so grim in it. As if the doctor had just delivered some very bad news. He was annoyed when he saw me laughing and told me that only fools grin stupidly at a camera. We stuck 4 copies onto the application form and enclosed a loose copy with it. I don't know where the negative went. But I've kept the 6th copy in my mani-purse.

He was diagnosed last June and they said that he was already in stage 3. He passed away in August. At least he didn't suffer for long. Sometimes when I open my purse to pay the milkman or the vegetable vendor, I wonder if I will only remember him as the man with the severe expression from that photo. Of course I won't. I have wonderful memories from all those years together. Some of the best ones were never captured on camera.