Thursday, July 09, 2009

Childhood Vignettes

Been meaning to post these old pictures but only after I'd touched them up a bit. Well, they required a bit more touching up than I'm equipped for so I've finally decided to just put them up and put out of your misery all you poor folks who have been dropping in here hoping to see something new hehe.


I just love this picture. In the wake of the Mizo insurgency, the family fled to Shillong and settled there. At least, us children settled there with Mum's parents while Mum and Dad stayed on in Aizawl since Dad was in govt service. It wasn't often they could come visit, especially Dad, so family get-togethers were rare and pretty joyous occasions.


My grandfather was one of the kindest men that ever lived. His name was Zalawra and he helped start up the Mizo Presbyterian Sunday School. We used to have a picture of him and a little me going off to church together on a lovely sunday morning but ack, despite frenetic hunts for it I just can't find it. Grandfather was the strong, silent, hardworking, bookworm type and one treasured memory I have of him is a beautiful, gold-coloured little pen that came with the tiny little diary he had (they made tiny diaries in the old days) and I loved the pen so much that he eventually gave it to me. That was when I couldn't even properly write anything yet. He was run over one evening in Shillong on his way home from church by a speeding car whose driver was never known.


My youngest sister wasn't born yet here. She came as something as an afterthought. Which reminds me we used to have a lot of pictures of her as a baby, even on the lawns of Roberts ' Hospital in Shillong where she was born so I must go look for those to scan. Childhood memories disappear so quickly without pictures, and the pictures themselves fade, mildew, get misplaced or eventually just lose all significance for the living.

17 comments:

  1. love this. can almost smell shillong!

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  3. Ah memories, huh fed?

    pica, nia an biang a puar tha ve alom hehe

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  4. Oooh, I love old photographs. & I'm sorry the layout didn't work for you :(

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  5. What a coincidence. Last night I chanced upon the website of one middle school in England, and looked at the old photos, some dating as far back as 1942. There is something about old black and white photographs that tugs at the heartstrings. Little boys and girls in prim clothes standing/sitting in attention, or grown ups with their then-fashionable hairstyles and clothes.

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  6. I think pictures were much more precious back then, what with the digicams and camera-phones nowadays. I don't even remember the last time I got any snaps printed. It doesn't have that value anymore.
    My mum still maintains her old pictures in those albums with black pages, where one would have to paste the "holders" on the corners to attach the pictures. As kids, she would carefully show us pictures of her mum and dad whom we never met as they had passed away before we were even born.
    I'm sorry about your grandad, and love that you have something to remember him by. I never got the chance to say goodbye to mine either.
    I guess in a world of technology and an ever-changing fast-life, we forget to remember the things that matter most.

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  7. Hey red, I remember those albums with the little triangular holders and tiny square black and white pictures. In our case, we graduated them to sticky albums which couldn't stand up to damp and so many precious old photographs were forever damaged. Yes, I guess in the past people didn't take things as much for granted as we do today.

    ambs, have you noticed how some people in old pictures pose so stiffly and starchily they seem totally unreal!

    joonbird, yeah I'm sorry about the layout too. Maybe some other time..

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  8. wow! are you the chubby one in centre or the tall one on the right?

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  9. In the last pic you mean? I'm the one on the left looking down. I always had very nice, neat shoes unlike my older sis who always scuffed and wore out hers extra fast :)

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  10. Ah! Endearing black and whites slowly turn to lovely sepia toned pictures. A metaphor for our memories, they turn from the crisp to hazy. Like the Himalayan monsoon mists that suddenly upwell from the valleys below and gentrly make everything fuzzy yet beautiful. Z, thanks for sharing this.

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  11. Nice photos.Those old black and white photos mean a lot more than the color ones, If you know what I mean by Old black and white :)

    Btw, where in shillong were you that time? Madanriting or in Nongrim Hills?

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  12. Charming, nostalgic pics. Such sweet little girls. I specially like the one with silky hair so proudly minding her shoes. Btw,your grandad was a well known name in Shillong though i didn't know him personally.

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  13. anty..sap tong min zirtir ve rawh..i thiam e

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  14. Dare i ask for the dates of these treasured mementos? ur dad looks smart
    Zalawra ur ganmps...wow
    Btw..I got Zalawra medal in Sunday school!

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  15. Wow, that's great. And no, you may not ask the dates. All I can tell you is that it was in the last millenium hehe

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