Daily Anecdotes

Friday, October 28, 2005


This picture belongs to the amateur phtographer.

Something funny happened in front of my eyes and my ears this morning. I was in a photo gallery which belongs to a good friend of mine, needed to talk with him. A respectable Indian family, from the astonishing land of India, was there, wanted to take a family picture. They were grand parents with their two sons a daughter and four grand children I suppose. They all were handsome and chic and talked and laughed all the time; seemed quite happy and vivid at least till they got bored by the fresh man, by the young photographer. Seemed that the grand dad had come recently, or maybe not. May be he and his wife, like most people who immigrate in mid-age, couldn't or, quite rightly, didn’t like to loose their original accent, or may be they had come just for a short visit, to see their children, I don’t know.
Anyway because the master photographer was talking to me his right hand man, he was his left hand man I realized later though, went to take the pictures. I was looking at him as we were talking and I saw that he was not comfortable at all. Was it his big break to take a picture of so many people together, all look nice and all in focus? We don’t know. He looked a bit too much nervous for the simple job he was doing and ... I’m sorry I forgot to tell this for those of you who are not familiar with the accent: The grand dad pronounced some words a little different; for example he pronounced words like “lotus”: "lot-us". Instead of "low-tes".
After a while, after waiting too long in fact in silence, in front of the camera and watching the apprentice sweating and messing with the camera and lenses, the “grand ma” lost patience and asked her son in an irritated but controlled tone:
"What on earth is he doing?"
And his husband who too looked uneasy and worried answered before the son opens his mouth. He said:
"I think he is going to focus now."
The mother asked, horrified:
" ALL Of US?!"