How many times have you been told that your eyes are the most efficient photographic equipment that helps enrich your storehouse of memories with indelible images of life? Images that help the tranquil mind to pen travelogues and picturesque narratives of unforgettable journeys. But looks like the digital era has spread its tentacles to rob our eyes of their power to explore nature and assimilate images.
Edgy travellers, hopping from one site to another, no longer feast on the visuals with naked eyes. Peering through the digital eye of the sleek camera slung around one’s neck is the perennial preoccupation of the restless traveller shuffling his feet in search of catchy images. In his quest for a rich crop of photographs, his eyes are masked forever. Straining every nerve of his neck, he twists and turns the camera to get the ideal click, review it instantly and delete it if he doesn’t fancy it. All amidst the thundering noise of a smoky, silvery waterfall that shimmers in the rays of the morning sun. Or standing dwarfed at the foothills of a range of mountains. All that he hankers for is a vantage point to work out that perfect click on his high megapixel camera. And so we have heads haggling for a right-angled view and eyes peering through the camera lens in front of picturesque lakes, waterfalls, mountains, gardens and historical monuments that are scattered all across this majestic sub-continent.
Out of sync with the surroundings, the visitor has no time to freshen his/her mind’s vision by feasting on the dazzling visuals, yet finds time to click away. Setting out on a journey to create rejuvenating memories turns out to be a vain exercise of tugging back home an inert consignment of surplus digital references that hardly serve to rekindle the pulsating ambience of the spot that one visited simply because the wandering mind was fixated on the focussing of the camera. An avid backpacker would vouch for the fact that memories, though kindled, are not truly defined by photographs. The excitement of stepping into an unfamiliar zone could hardly be recreated by framed mementos. One has to delve deep into the mind and tap into the warm reserves of the psyche wherein stored are the images that hold those precious moments of stillness and solitude. Images that bequeath to us a profound insight — the kind of which William Wordsworth experienced when he said, “To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.
Isn’t it time to bid goodbye to the camera-obsessed tourist and welcome the discerning traveller to promote tourism as a passionate adventure and safeguard it from being reduced to mere delirious exercise? sudhavjan@gmail.com