An obsolete picture

In the early 2000s, before the digital camera age began in India, people mostly used cameras which took a long time to develop pictures. During this time, if somebody had a Polaroid it was a huge deal. This is why you could find many photographers around famous areas of the city where they approach you with an offer to click your pictures and then sell them to you for an unusually high price. Most of them did it for money as there was not enough work to be found for a photographer during that time. 

Now that you know this, let the story begin… 

On a beautiful sunny day during the spring season, a couple decided to go to the beach for an evening walk. They were walking along the shorelines, talking about life and how everything was going. It was the perfect moment in every way, with waves gushing at their feet while they held their sandals in their hands, the sea engulfing the sun while creating a calm hue of yellow and red over the horizon, and the city noise slowly fading away in the background as if the couple was moving into a different dimension. Just when they were about to hold their hands a young man comes and stops them in their tracks and asks, “Do you guys need a picture? It’s only for 100 rupees?” Both of them look at him with annoying expressions and say, “No, thank you.” 

They continue with their walk, slowly moving into their dimension again. After a few minutes of walking an old man in his 70s comes toward them, he’s got a camera hanging around his neck and he asks them, “You look like a loving couple, mind if I take a picture and give it to you?” This time the couple is a little confused as this man did not tell them the price right away. That’s when the girl asks the old man,” How much it is for the picture’? The old man replies, “It’s free!”. 

Now they are even more confused but then look at each other with an expression as if they are saying “Hey it’s free let’s do it!”. The old man asks them to pose and takes a beautiful portrait with the sun and sea in the background and hands the picture to them. They say thank you to him and continue with their walk. But now, they are not talking about their lives, instead, they are wondering why would someone do that. That’s when the guy turns back, runs to the old man, and asks, “Why?”. The old man smiles and replies, “Well… if you want to know why then it will cost you money.” The girl comes behind the guy and both of them look at each other and now they are even more confused than before. The girl then asks the old man, “Okay, but how much?” The old man says, ”Let me wrap up my day in an hour and if you’re still here by then I’ll tell you why and then you can decide for yourself about how much that picture is worth, sounds good?” The couple looks at each other as if they are asking “Do we have that much time today?”, but then, both agree. 

After an hour goes by the old man returns to the couple who are now sitting at the beach staring at the sun as it dives into the sea. The old man sits beside them and hands them some peanuts. The guy asks the old man, “What’s this for?” The old man says, “Before I tell you why, I’m going to tell you a story, and no story should be told without some snacks in the hands of the listeners.” Then the old man begins… 

You see, when I was young, probably 15-16 years old, I was an admirer of physics and astronomy and I wanted to become a great scientist. I read all about the ancient science that our Indian philosophers and gurus wrote, exploring the secrets of the universe, finding the meaning of life, and whatnot. But, as fate would have it, my dad wanted me to join the Indian army and serve my nation, and so I did. Everything was going great until the wars broke out, all the soldiers were shipped out to different posts, and you would hear the news of your friends dying, whole squadrons getting decimated, you know, the usual stuff that happens in wars. As far as I remember, every single soldier was terrified, not a single day would go by when I would think about my death and how or when it would come at my life’s door. And then, it happened, I was shipped out to a remote post in the desert where the days were as hot as your morning tea and the nights were as cold as the hearts of your enemies across the border. You see, there’s not much to do in such places and eventually, you either become paranoid or get lost inside your thoughts. Luckily, I was the victim of the latter one as I thought about the meaning of life, death, and the most beautiful thing; fate. The boy suddenly interrupted and asked in a calm voice, “Beautiful fate? How can you say something’s beautiful if it is the cause of the pain you had to go through? Wasn’t it fate that brought you to that hell?” The old man replied with a smile, “That’s the beauty son, at that time, even I could have agreed with you. But you see, fate is not a moment in time, fate is the journey that will take you to the darkest of places, but eventually, it also takes you to the places where you can find the light of your life, and that’s when you realize what a beautiful thing it is.” 

“So, as I was saying”, the old man continues with his story, after a few days in that hell, we were ambushed by an enemy squadron and some got injured and unlucky ones died. We were promptly transported to a nearby station where doctors were waiting for us. That’s when I met the light of my life, my wife. She was a nurse there who treated our squad and took care of us. She used to talk to us about the good stuff going on in the world so that our minds would be busy and not think about what happened to us. Luckily for me, I caught her eye and we fell in love in no time. Twenty years went by, and we married and had 2 beautiful girls, but then again, fate struck and she was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in a year. The couple looked at him with sad eyes and the boy asked the old man again, “You still think fate is beautiful?” The old man sat there in silence for a minute, just smiling and looking at the sky, and then he pulled out one photograph and showed it to the couple. The girl asked, “Whose is this?” and the old man replied, “Remember how I told you we were taken to the hospital?” the couple nodded. The old man said, “Well as fate would have it, there was a journalist who was covering the horror stories about that war and that’s when he clicked our pictures, just me and her, smiling at each other, probably because I made some stupid joke.” Now the couple was in absolute shock because they were looking at the photograph of this old man’s best moment of his life. 

The boy breaks the silence and asks the old man, “You still didn’t answer our question, why would you charge us to tell us the reason?”. The old man smiled and looked at the girl and asked, “Is he this clueless all the time?” the girl laughed and said, “Even more than this.” Then the old man turned to the boy and said, “Young boy, I’m not charging you for the photograph I clicked, what you fail to realize is that our meeting was a chance encounter that couldn’t have been possible if even a single thing in this universe would have happened differently. What that means is, the way every human being on this planet lived, the way these planets and suns moved around each other, everything conspired to put you in that moment which you see in your photograph, because now… that photograph is an obsolete moment in time and nothing in this universe has the power to change that, not even a god.” The old man then smiles and asks the couple, “So, how much do you think will you pay me for it?” The couple remains silent for a good minute and then the old man interrupts, “It seems that you’ve learned the lesson, you see, nothing in this world can buy a beautiful moment in time and it makes me sad that we humans continue to chase money which can only give us materialistic pleasures but not an eternal one.”