a film roll full of almosts

i have a drawer containing more than 190 Polaroids.

at least, i assume they are still in there. in a turn of events that feels almost too perfectly written, i lost the key.

so now there is a literal vault in my room filled with previous versions of me and the people who drifted in and out of the frame. some stayed for a season. some lasted longer. some probably received far more expensive film than their eventual role in my life justified.

but bygones.

i have always been strangely attached to the almosts.

the nearly empty desk an hour before a final exam, because learning, for me, was never about memorising the next line or colour-coding notes i did not need. it was about understanding something well enough to use it to own it, almost and letting it become part of the texture of my life rather than another fact stored temporarily for a grade.

the cursor blinking over a project that had been stuck in a loop of “we’re almost there” for months.

the last day of exams, standing in a hallway and pretending the world was about to break open.

the half-packed suitcase: evidence of the city i almost did not move to, and the life i almost did not return to.

the degree sitting on my desk, tied to a choice i nearly did not make, only for the other path to disappear so completely that this one began to feel less accidental.

my professional life has its own collection of almosts.

there was one role, the only one i applied for, almost as an afterthought. i had no idea how many people wanted it. i almost did not press send. i almost stayed inside the comfort of doing nothing, where failure could not reach me because neither could anything else.

but i left.

and the moment i stepped into that new space, i realised how much i had been missing and how little i would have known about my own capacity if i had chosen to stay small.

perhaps it was my decision. perhaps it was fate rearranging the furniture while i was not looking.

either way, these are the moments i keep returning to: the seconds just before something became something else.

i think i photograph them because the almosts feel more honest than the dones.

the dones are polished. they arrive with announcements, captions and carefully selected proof that everything eventually worked out.

the almosts hold the actual story.

the uncertainty. the exhaustion. the version of you who did not yet know whether any of the effort would lead somewhere. that quiet, suspended breath before the world decided what the moment would mean.

somewhere inside that locked drawer are Polaroids from the days immediately after my highschool final exams.

we were standing together with the confidence of people who had not yet received enough rejection to question their plans. we believed life would move in a straight line: the right university, the right career, the right people, followed by the exact future we had already rehearsed in our heads.

then came the first set of noes.

the university that did not happen. the person who did not stay. the plan that collapsed after we had already introduced it to everyone as our future.

at seventeen, every detour felt like evidence that life had gone wrong.

looking back now, those photographs feel different.

i see people standing at the edge of disappointments that would eventually redirect them towards lives none of us had imagined.

there is the friend who fought for a medical seat only to end up in law school, losing that "potential" career path felt like a catastrophe at the time, but now it is easier to see how that rejection may have spared her from a life that was never truly hers. others found their footing in the wreckage of the "one" we thought would stay in our happily ever after; that heartbreak, which felt like the end of the world, quietly cleared the space for the lives they are actually living now.

others found opportunities in places that were never part of the original plan. some reached milestones through paths that would have terrified their younger selves. there is the one who landed a career-defining internship just when the world felt like a place to quit, and the one who always wanted to go abroad and ended up hitting a dozen milestones without ever drawing up a single plan. some are still working it out, which may be the most honest outcome of all.

the photographs do not erase what those changes cost.

there was disappointment. comparison. the quiet humiliation of watching someone else move forward while your own life appeared to have misplaced the instructions.

but the almosts were not permanent failures.

they were beginnings that did not yet resemble beginnings.

lately, my camera has been collecting dust.

Polaroid film used to cost around 1,500. now, it can reach nearly 7,500, which means every click must apparently be evaluated with the seriousness of a rising bijli ka bill or a full tank of fuel.

one blurry finger near the lens and there goes a financially irresponsible memory.

the sensible response would be to keep the camera on the shelf and use the perfectly capable camera already attached to my phone.

unfortunately, the urge to pick it up is only getting stronger.

maybe it is because digital photographs make abundance too easy. i can take twenty versions of the same moment, inspect each one and delete anything that fails to look intentional.

a Polaroid does not allow that kind of control.

the light may be wrong. someone may blink. the frame may catch the second before everyone was ready. you press the button without knowing whether the photograph will become beautiful, awkward or completely unusable.

and then you wait.

perhaps that is why it feels so much like life.

most of it is spent pressing buttons without knowing what will develop.

we understand certain moments only years later, once enough time has passed for the image to become visible. the thing we called a failure becomes a redirection. the ending becomes protection. the period in which nothing seemed to be happening turns out to have been quietly rearranging everything.

i think that is what i want the camera to prove.

not that my life was beautiful, or that i always knew where it was going.

only that i was there while it remained unresolved.

that there was a version of me sitting beside the unfinished work, standing before the ceremony and living through the plan before it fell apart. a version who had no idea what happened next, but moved towards it anyway.

perhaps the locked drawer is appropriate.

those photographs belong to lives i can no longer return to, even if i eventually find the key. the people in them have changed. i have changed. some almosts became everything. others became nothing at all.

but for one small square of film, none of that had been decided yet.

and maybe that is why i keep wanting to take more.

not for the milestones or the highlight reel, but for the unremarkable moments immediately before them. the evidence that life existed while it was still becoming.

the film is absurdly expensive. the mathematics remains indefensible.

but there are worse things to waste money on than proof that the story was still unfinished.

because it still is.

and i suppose that is the best part.

If you’re reading this and you also have a pile of 'almosts' sitting in a corner somewhere, do yourself a favor: take a photo of the mess. It's cheaper than therapy, mostly.