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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Diary of a shelfie addict
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Diary of a shelfie addict

The life of a shelfie uploader, who seeks likes as if they were oxygen

Have you joined the shelfie bandwagon, arranging the everyday objects of your home, photographing them and uploading them for the ‘likes’? Photographs: Courtesy Shoba Narayan Premium
Have you joined the shelfie bandwagon, arranging the everyday objects of your home, photographing them and uploading them for the ‘likes’? Photographs: Courtesy Shoba Narayan

The other day, my husband came to the dining table and said, “Where are the serving spoons?" “In between the frangipani flowers, dearest," I said. A bunch of children from the building ran in, exclaiming that they were ravenously hungry. Saturday night is Maggi night in my house and as a result, we become the most popular family in my building. In place of the familiar yellow plastic packet, the children saw an arrangement so alien it stopped them, and the neighbour’s dog, in their tracks. In the centre of my wooden dining table was a giant white bowl, with a mound of black Assam rice on it, stroked and brushed like a sand dune. On top of the rice was a strawberry with a yellow crayon stuck across it. Across the table was I, photographing the scene using my smartphone. I was in search of the perfect shelfie.

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One of my recent favourites was a macaroon juxtaposed against a leather-bound notebook, and chocolate shavings in a pristine white bowl. What gave it panache was the driftwood on the side. There wasn’t a necessarily logical reason for these objects to be together on a table. They just looked good. After spending days surfing these photographs, I became obsessed with photographing shelfies myself. I didn’t think it would become an addiction. I thought I was merely photographing objects that were littered around my house. Within a few days, my project took on a life of its own.

Typical evening. My 12-year-old daughter rushes into the house kicking off her shoes and throwing down her school satchel. She has scraped herself and there is blood. What do I do? I whip out my mobile phone.

“Ma, I’m hurt."

“Wait a minute, darling. The light is just right. Hold on just one second."

I’m stalking around the fallen school satchel like a predator, trying to capture its folds; adjusting the casually thrown sneaker so that it is perpendicular to the purple school bag. As an afterthought, I bring out a pair of sunglasses and balance them on top of the school books that have been teased to resemble a volcanic mound. I turn them around to show off the logo. If she can show off her Céline and Dior, I can show off the sunglasses I bought from a Texas cowboy hat-wearing vendor on the Brigade Road junction in Bangalore.

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“Ma, I am bleeding."

“Just put a sock on it, dearest."

This then is what it has come to. I am able to ignore a hurt, bleeding child just to capture a perfect shot. War photographers were perhaps this way, I rationalize, when I come out of my zombie-like torpor. But I am no war photographer. I am merely a shelfie uploader, who seeks “likes" as if they were oxygen.

Shelfies are the click-and-publish equivalent of the still lifes of yore. Paul Cézanne painted fruit bowls with luscious apples and glistening grapes. We called it art. Today’s photographers click such still lifes and upload them for free, just so they can get 17,123 likes. The pleasure is in the sharing; in the appreciation; in the finding of random objects that will become beautiful photographs.

There are some people I follow who have 720,000 followers. They upload their still-life compositions and get 234 comments. My goals are much more modest. I would like a comment, maybe two. Then again, I’m a novice at this.

This morning, white jasmine bloomed in my garden. Rather than admiring it and smelling it like I used to, I picked out four flowers and threw them casually on my dining table. I placed a cup of coffee in the middle. The black coffee contrasted with the white flowers nicely. Still, something was missing, I felt. I stared around the living room and discovered the matrimonial section of a newspaper. I crumpled it and threw it in between the jasmine flowers. “Punjabi widower with five issues wants maternal wife. Caste no bar," said the crumpled fold. I placed a pair of scissors on the side. After all, advertisements were meant for cutting. The scissors gleamed murderously. Very Agatha Christie, or was it channelling Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl book?

Light glinted off the dining table. A matrimonial ad, black coffee, a weapon and white jasmine flowers. Now, that was a composition. I clicked the scene and uploaded the photo. As of this writing, there were 11 likes, and most of them were from my family. Actually I have never gotten 11 likes. Maximum 4; 11 just sounded good.

Shoba Narayan is staring above her computer at the cockroach on the wall. Can she use it in a shelfie? she wonders. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com

Also Read | Shoba’s previous Lounge columns

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Published: 02 Aug 2014, 12:15 AM IST
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