Picture Perfect

Can mere words do justice to something that is as beautiful and as pure as the heavens themselves? Probably. Probably not. The richness, the exoticness, the heart felt honesty of the words may somehow help the reader imagine the beauty and magnificence of the moment. A beautiful cherry red Mustang went whizzing past me. The ambience of the dimly lit room awakened the solitude of my heart. I could hear the heavens singing, as I stood atop that snow laden, gentle mountain. White silvery clouds glide almost imperceptibly against that immensely blue sky. The music that streamed out of his fingers touched my deepest feelings; I felt music rush through my veins. Her endearing innocence made me live like a child once again. All these and countless more epitomize and exemplify the grandeur, opulence and beauty of our surroundings. They help us visualize and feel the writer’s experience as our own. Visualization is a good exercise. Anything manifested as a reality was first conceived in the mind’s eye. By relating to the experiences of the writer, we are in a way, bringing those beautiful moments into our own existence. And that’s where the catch lies. The writer has described his emotions through his own set of thoughts translated into words. Another person may experience something similar and describe the moment using his own set of words. A third person who has read any one or both of these experiences may experience something similar, yet there are enough variations in his experience for it to be a part of his own unique individuality. That is where mere words, no matter how catchy, fall short. We evolved from objectionable grunts to perceivable sounds to words to photographs to videos. Today, a photograph or a video, people argue, pretty much suffices to convey all the emotions it’s supposed to convey. A picture after all, speaks a thousand words. (A video is merely a set of fast moving pictures). Agreed. But I’d say unspoken words. Let’s say, there’s a photograph of a beautiful sandy beach. The panorama of the picture makes you one with the roaring waves of the cerulean ocean. The sun, as it plunges into the horizon, disperses its orange subsistence onto the surface of the ocean. The evening zephyr and the cool granular sand, provide tranquility to our hearts. However, these, or any other words, still fall short. An elaborate description has been given of how a particular scene ushers a sea of emotions inside us. Yet, something’s amiss. Our feelings are too dimensional to be fitted into a singular plane of linear arrangement of alphabets. When we see a beautiful photograph, our eyes, the windows to our souls, imbibe the picture into us. Yet, in spite of the numerous attempts to describe how we feel, we convey our feelings best through silence. The rapt, silent appreciation speaks far more than any sound ever annotated. Silence is the prefatory, the middle man and the conclusion. Words merely fill in between. However, it’s only through silence, that we understand the importance of words. It’s only in silence that we find our answers. But after all’s said and done, I am no prolific writer. When it comes to conveying something, I am better off using a camera or a guitar than a pen for my ardor for things. And if I have to describe that beautiful face, a camera comes head and shoulders ahead of everything else. As you may have guessed already, I am talking about Esha.

Esha, in a sense, is a very unique beauty. As such, she is your typical girl next door. A plain Jane, she always avoids using makeup, fussing with her hair and wearing loud clothes. She lets that gentle, affable smile of hers convey the purity of her heart. She speaks. She speaks a lot. Cute things, Wisdom things, Love things, Common sense things. A beautiful amalgamation, with each ingredient in the right proportion. But at the same time, she inter-spreads her conversations with silence. She very well knows when it is required of her to stay silent. She is like music, silence inter spread with sound. And that’s what I love about her. Well, there are also a host of other equally important things I love about her. Her endearing innocence, that softening smile, her alluring skin, those feeble, delicate fingertips, her cute childlike voice, and most importantly, her sparkling eyes. She’s an ensemble of everything angelic, everything that love can define. She is the girl who makes you smile each morning when you wake up and smile at night when you lay down your head. Her fervently child like antics make you want to simply stare at her and to admire her every moment. At the same time, she has a brilliant feministic grace to herself. And the best part is, there is absolutely no artificiality to her behavior. She speaks, behaves and lives, with an open mind and an honest heart. If you have but one look at her, you’d understand. Over all her years on this planet, she has molded her body to portray her inner feelings, feelings which forever breathe love, innocence and happiness. And this is what I love the most about my girl. My girl, is My girl.

“Did you write this?” I felt a bit sloshed out. I felt a bit shaken.

“Do I look like someone who lets people write in his personal diary?” Aditya had that usual air of arrogance in his voice. “Reading is a different question altogether.” He added, almost immediately.

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“It’s really nice.” I actually wanted to tell him that something else but didn’t. Aditya at times scared me with that voice of his.

“Thanks.” I could feel him heaving a sigh of relief. I wasn’t looking at him in that moment.

“Thanks a lot.” He added further. I knew I had to break the cycle. I did.

“Tell me one thing…”

“Yes?”

“What made you write this? There has to be some significant event that happened that made you write this.”

“There is.”

“What is it?” I shot before he could complete his short sentence.

“I call that moment Picture Perfect.”

“And it has to do with?” My interview style questions kept coming.

“Capturing forever that beautiful face in a photograph.” Aditya seemed to be now lost in a world of his own.

“You mean Esha’s?” I tried to bring him back to the place where we were. There was still a lot left to ask.

“Yes Princess, Esha’s.” Aditya replied calmly. I guess you can think only one thought at a time. Either love or hate, but never both simultaneously.

“Please elaborate.” I tried to keep my side of the conversation as short as possible.

“Surely.” And he began.

“It happened at the start of our relationship. Fresh in love, we used to do some cute little thing or the other to surprise each other. They were mostly instantaneous ideas by virtue of which we tried to get the other person smiling. It was like we had wrapped ourselves as a gift for our better halves.”

Aditya paused to study my expressions. I tried to look as attentive as possible. He continued further.

“That day, we were strolling around in a place a bit far from my college. This place’s got everything- juice bars, ice cream parlors, restaurants, coffee shops, book stores, cloth outlets and even a B-School. Young, old, singles, couples, everyone had retreated under its early evening roof. The trees, with their arching branches, spread a soothing blanket all over the place. If you observed closely, for a change, you saw a lot of happy faces at one place. Something’s that’s very rare for our city.”

“I know.” As short as possible Anchal, as short as possible.

“Among this diversified population were present me and Esha. No marks for guessing that.” Aditya smiled. I smiled back in honest acceptance. He continued

“She knows how to carry herself well. That is why, anything she wears, she looks marvelous. But when she wears something black or pink, the marvelous quotient rises exponentially. Those colors complement her absolutely fair skin beautifully. By the way, she likes to wear brown color tee shirts a lot.” Aditya stressed overwhelmingly on all the “LY” words.

“That’s true.” I had seen Esha’s photograph. What Aditya said, fitted in perfectly.

“Generally, she wears western outfits. That day, however, she was wearing a black color Salwar Kameez. It had beautiful patterns in red, golden and green. The patterns reflected off the dress with a radiant vibrato. Though I like to see her in western outfits more, the dress she was wearing that day synthesized my mind to appreciate her in something traditional as well.”

“Okay.” Aditya’s language was getting more flowery by the minute.

“By the way, if you are to ask me what do I feel about different colors, I’d say that Pink is for cute, sweet and lovely, red’s for hotness, white’s for purity, brown’s for her favorite color, and black is for sexy.” Aditya added almost immediately. “And yes, black is beautiful.”

“Yes Despo.” I said with a hint of mischief. Aditya smiled in return. He wasn’t interested in any mischief currently.

“Thanks. I don’t know about me, but Esha definitely has a good sense of colors. It’s like she wears clothes as per the weather. And to be frank, the weather’s always awesome because she wears such beautiful clothes.”

“So did you finally click click?” I tried to remind Aditya the reason of the conversation.

“Yes. Click click click many times.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes. But the silly girl kept telling that her face is not photogenic.”

“Then?”

“I tried to butter her up into it. At the onset, she did some nakhras. But she’s too sweet to hold fort for more than 20 seconds.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Yes. And of all the photographs I clicked that day, two of them hold a special place in my heart.”

“And when are you going to tell me how you felt about those?”

“Obviously now.”

“Please elaborate.”

“Sure.” And he began, once again.

“In the first photograph, she’s smiling with her face tilted slightly to right. The cool evening breeze had made her hair bounce and flutter that wee bit to make for a perfect photograph. Her eyes have a definite twinkle in them. Her smile was so wonderful that you had to see it to believe it. That photograph was a perfect epitome of a girl truly in love. I still feel like it happened only a moment ago.”

“And the second?”

“In the second photograph, she is simply staring at the camera, nothing else, just point-blank staring. I had heard people say Be Natural when in front of a camera. At the moment that cute little soul was, I suppose, confused at what to do next. I was furiously clicking pic after pic. There was no stopping me, when I happened to click this photograph. The result is what I call, well, a naturally natural picture!! The innocence in her eyes was beyond words to express. She just calmly looked into the cam and trusted me to do the rest. Thankfully, my cam didn't let me down. Sweet innocence reflected from those eyes, and the quietness and warmth I felt when I saw what I had clicked, I knew she is one of the most beautiful creations ever made. That sweet face, those gentle eyes, time stood still as I admired Esha.”

If I had given Aditya a few seconds extra to ponder, I know he would have come up with something much better, far exemplary to describe Esha.