A week or so ago, I was at a digital printing press to get a few of my photos printed. I was sitting down with the designer trying to get the photos organized in the way I wanted when something pretty extraordinary happened.
The designer was reading one of the notes and suddenly gave me a bewildered look. He was suddenly all smiles and was so overwhelmed with happiness, that he struggled to get a sentence out right. Then he pointed to the screen at a word, which was the location I had taken a few of the photographs and said “Thats my home town.”
The place in question was a beach in Kerala, one of the lesser known tourist spots. He then looked at the photos for a minute or two and then opened up his own album and started showing me photos from the same place. At this point I was like “Hmmm… Whats happening here?” The guy now very happy, went on to show me photos for the next few minutes. Fortunately we got back to the task at hand after the short photo tour.
What was amazing about the whole experience was how incredibly happy that guy was to be reminded of home. I have never really traveled for a long duration of time and as a result I have never ‘missed’ my home town but this experience was an interesting eye opener for what it means to people.
Ps: This was the photo in question