The World That Raised Me

Most of the pictures that I took in the late 80s were shot by this camera Kodak Ektralite 10 which was gifted to me by my sister when I was 11, it was easy to operate and had a cartridge of 24 pictures which you could just slide in the back. Perfect for a kid. The pictures were slightly smaller than a regular camera though.

My dad had many camera in his collection starting form the 50s like his Rolleiflex. It still worked. The film was hard to obtain though. Around late 80s he had a Yashica which he would let me have occasionally and to his dismay I eventually broke.

But the one I always wanted was an SLR and I finally got my wish in the mid 90s when my Mamoo came to Pakistan and gave me his own camera. I loved that camera and took so many pictures with it but it was stolen. I don't remember the exact model no. Thats Rohan in the picture. My photography has mostly been my family and kids.

Obviously I got the photography bug from my Dad, interestingly although he took many pictures before but I don't remember him walking around with the camera at all when I was little, still our house had all kinds of photographic equipment just scattered around mostly for doing black and white developing and enlarging. 

In my teens I would spend summer holidays in my make shift dark room enlarging pictures I had taken, it involved bathing the picture paper in different chemicals and timing it just right so that the blacks developed properly. It was the most fun I ever had. So I guess jumping to video was a natural step forward. If I connect the dots of my life its plain to see that my path was not random.

I keep getting hit by wave after wave of nostalgia. I guess everyone misses their childhood — the wonder of it, and how seemingly small things brought so much joy.

For me, the highlight of my day was television: the 5 o’clock cartoons, or the late-night movies that I wasn’t allowed to stay up for but were kindly recorded on VHS by my brothers. Then there were the 8 o’clock TV series like Airwolf, and the 7:15 comedies like Perfect Strangers.

We had this strange, huge TV antenna, very different from the ones usually available here in Pakistan. The best thing about it was that you could change its direction by turning a dial, and a machine would physically rotate the antenna.

I still remember when morning transmissions first started — those five minutes of cartoons before going to school.

My brother recorded the movie Labyrinth, and to my joy, I found its cover in MAG magazine. I cut it out, put it on the tape, and was ridiculously happy about it. I did the same with the cover for The NeverEnding Story.

I used to make title screens for my videotapes on the Commodore 64, all manually, just by pressing different key combinations. It took hours. They would say “Naeem Collection”, followed by my contact details... and then the movie or TV recording would begin.

Before coming to Canada I managed to capture a few old tapes. 

Sometimes I wonder: if I could go back, would I even survive without the internet, social media, and the dopamine addiction that comes with them?

So it makes me sad that all of that is truly gone.

Even if we somehow had all those things again, we couldn’t recapture the feelings they evoked — the pure joy of watching Javed Miandad hit a six in Sharjah, or watching a match when load-shedding would suddenly strike and you always had the radio nearby as a backup.

Sometimes I succeed in getting my kids to watch some of the classics, like Fraggle Rock or Labyrinth, but I know they can never have the same importance in their lives that they had in mine.

So, the bottom line is: I’m missing my childhood days, and the people who inhabited that world.

My parents — may Allah rest their souls. My brothers and sister, My school friends. The things are still sometimes there.

The world around them is gone.