Reset. Recline. Reclaim. The new ‘Sunday’ avatar of my favorite newspaper- THE HINDU, thus introduced itself a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed skimming through the many pages of the newspaper after its makeover. The sections were fresh and eye-catching. Of them all, my favorite section is called ‘FRAMED’.
People who know me well, will recollect (hopefully, with the positive kind of nostalgia) my love for pictures. Pictures from magazines, newspapers, and pictures taken by the ‘reel’ camera, the Digi-cam and more recently, the DSLR (not mine!). Since childhood, cutting out pictures from all the zillion magazines: Week, Outlook, Traveler, Women’s era (Yes, there was, or still is a magazine called just that), India Today, Chanda Mama, Reader’s digest etc.; that my dad subscribed to, was a good pastime. These pictures found their way into collages, scrap books, greeting cards for my dear ones and my ‘DIY’ thermocol notice boards.
Words have amazed me: their power, their strength to make, break, hurt or heal. But, pictures; have amazed me even more so. I have always believed that a single picture can speak volumes about the scene/ the place/ the people in it. And hence, I’m a die-hard romantic of all sorts of pictures (esp.in print).
Coming back to the Sunday Hindu and the section called FRAMED, you guessed right, it has pictures! It’s a story about the uniqueness of a place in India told through pictures. Today’s ‘FRAMED’ was about a village in Thrissur district, Kerala, named Marottichal, where a person who owns a small restaurant inspired the entire village to taking chess as a favorite pastime. Miraculously this brought down the number of people who had serious alcohol issues. The week before, the picture story was about a village called ‘Bhaini Sahib’ in Punjab, where at least one member from every family is trained in classical music. All very mesmerizing! Looking forward to next week already! The pictures did a great dealing of talking (as always!) The ‘frames’ beautifully depicted the ‘big’ picture.
I’m currently battling time; and debating whether to continue reading the newspaper or switch back to epidemiology (Exams are coming up!). So I’ll stop having a guilt trip and get back to my academic pursuits. See you all!
My next blog will be about the ‘headless god’ whom I stumbled upon in the rural lanes of Vellore. So look out!