Of all things Old and Gold!

So here we go. My first ever article for an online community.

I am quite an avid reader, especially of tech blogs and the like, considering that I need to keep myself up-to-date. I have always wanted to pen down my experiences in life, being a keen observer. This is one skill that keeps me going in my profession, photography. I love shooting people more than anything else since it involves people and expressions and that is something that is universally different for each individual.

Here is a quick roundup of what I have been doing lately. Being the lucky one to have inherited quite a few collectibles and antiques, I have always found the entire experience of restoring old things very wholesome,. This was something that was taught to me by my parents from my formative years.

This is not the one I am talking about here.

One of my first experiences was repairing a really old gramophone with my dad. There is this funny thing that happened while we were repairing it and its worth a share. Old gramophones need to be wound so that spring coils itself and as you release it, it releases the built-in potential energy by unwinding it and playing the gramophone record playing back, your music for you. We were at our home on our terrace and we had wound the gramophone to the extent possible. We were not sure if it was in working condition since the entire box around it was eaten up by termites since it was dumped on the terrace.

As we were cleaning we were quite worried that this might have gotten rusted and spoilt but all of a sudden as I unwound the plate on which the record sits. The machine jumped out of my hand and sprung into action wounding my palm. It almost involuntarily jumped all over the terrace and we were shocked that moment. Later, we realized that it was just the built-up energy if the winding that made jumps out of my hand since the disc was now disengaged. We were quite startled to see how an inanimate object just jumped out of our hands and danced around the terrace and this is an experience we fondly remember as one of those dad-son, once in a lifetime experiences. The Gramophone now stands in working condition and is proudly displayed in our house, just as you enter. Yes, we custom made the missing parts and got some other fabricated and sent to us from Mumbai.

Many such similar experiences got me into this mode where I am always on the lookout for old things that can be restored and it's now almost a hobby turned profession. However, the ones who give me their old stuff are usually old themselves and many of them have handed me some of their nicest old collectibles which I treasure to this day.

In fact, I have a cupboard which in itself was a hand me down antique and most of my collectibles are stored here. What amazes me to this day is the fact that you are the lucky one to open a box that was closed and put in an attic 60 years ago. What did people see and think back then, what did they wear back then? What was life like in those days? These things totally get me into making this one of the most interesting things in my life.

In my next series, I will talk about how I digitized old film positives and converted them to pictures that can be viewed digitally.

---

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you felt about this article in the comments section. And do not forget to share this article with your friends and family on Social Media. If you are willing to write for us, Register Here or get in touch on Contact Us. Let's get back to writing.