Group photographs!

Blunders in group photographs are many. My earliest recollection of a group photo goes back to my kindergarten days. After paying handsome money, I brought home the class photograph. My mother scoured the photograph multiple times and finally asked, “Where are you in this picture?” I coolly replied, “I was absent on that day!” My mother was aghast! “Why did you buy this photograph at all?” I responded, “Everyone in class bought one. At least my friends are there! No?” You cannot beat a child’s self-effacing view of the world!

When you decide to take a group-photograph, it starts with a fundamental question, “Who will take the photograph?” If the volunteer is a part of the group, he is missed in the picture. Now, to include him, you need a second volunteer. And to include the first and the second together, you need a third. This exercise has no end in sight. Eventually, the members get fed-up- unable to hold their smile anymore!

To break this loop, you give your mobile off to an absolute stranger. He distracts you, telling you to move this way and that. While you are busy posing and pouting and smiling, suddenly, our man is nowhere. “Where did he go? My phone! My phone! It is with him!” you are frantic. It is too late. You might as well say bye-bye- both to the man and to your mobile!

To solve this problem, you use the group version of a selfie called “groupie”. You extend your arm to its farthest limit and beyond, straining every bone and sinew. All the heads are bunched up like grapes, but there are still some more to cover. One more attempt at arm-extension, and you’ve dropped your mobile. It lies prostrate, like a swatted cockroach, the screen broken, and the interiors gouged out. “That’s why I said I will take the picture!” someone comments, rubbing further salt to an already festering wound.

After the photograph is taken and shared, no one is happy. It may be a group picture, but each person looks only at himself. Grievances are many. The person’s head in the rightmost corner is chopped off. Someone finds only a bit of his collar. His head is eclipsed by the front-row head, that shifted at the opportune moment. “At least, they could have warned me before taking the picture. Now, my eyes are closed, and I look like a zombie!” Someone is unhappy that he is smiling too much, or too little. Or someone questions you, “Why are you staring like a deer frozen in fright, as though a torch-light was flashed at your face?”

No group photograph is complete without 2 photographers competing at the same time. Some eyes turn one way, some the other, and some faces are totally confused, one eye looking in each direction!

Arranging people in the order of heights is never easy. The short uncle in the back-row did not want to take any chances. He timed his high-jump perfectly! Now, in the released picture, he is all blurry, looking like a rocket taking off, floating high, over vales and hills! Everyone giggles, “Uncle! Why did you do this?”

We need this uncle who provides comic relief! He takes the focus away from our self-obsessed selves!