Empty Photography

For my sister-in-law's wedding at Chickmagalur I was requested to help out in the role of their photographer. Their family had no camera. I had one, my friend's Russian camera. Since I had shooted its trouble to some extent he had given it off to me for my use. I was using with reasonable results even with the flash unit that was given by another friend. They were both mine now. After a few dry runs the flash’s performance remained unsure.

In order to be safe, a simple automatic camera was borrowed from another friend as a stand-by. One film roll each was loaded into them. While loading film into my friend’s camera, I thought I knew the method.

On the way to Chickmagalur, we stopped over for a visit to the temple at Belur late evening. For my third shot here with my camera, the flash would not work! On reaching the destination, I tried to rectify the circuit with my tools which I expectedly carried, but in vain. Without flash, the purpose of this camera became invalid.

At the wedding ceremony, I was on a roll, in a new role clicking away from my second option camera. I diligently waited for right moments to capture and even made people stand for snaps where and how I fancied! After we returned from Chickmagalur the 3 or 4 exposures that had still remained – according to the counter - in the roll of 35 were clicked.

When the roll was developed at the studio, my doubt that had arisen mid-way was confirmed. The film had not got wound at all! There was a complete blank! Luckily for everyone, there was a professional photographer on duty there. My one-and-only-time role of a photographer turned out to be an unwitting drama. At the studio, I was shown where I had gone wrong in loading the film.

We sometimes have this tendency to behave like Sarvajna, shy to tell "I do not know". Film did not get exposed, but my Sarvajna attitude certainly did, for good!