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THE MUCH REGISTER

Nirmala

At dawn, I would be poked in the rib and woken up and unceremoniously marched off to the computer.

For the next couple of hours, I would sleep through a session on Photoshop, PhotoImpact and a slew of other image-editing software.

He was banging his head against the wall, but did not have the heart to give up. Even my dissuasion — "Darling, you are trying to turn a mule into a thoroughbred. What on earth makes you think you can pull it off?" — fell on deaf ears.

Even Professor Higgins would not have found Eliza Doolittle as much of a challenge. Apart from the photo-clicking-editing routine, he was trying to get me to understand the nitty-gritty of photo restoration.

He would define what something is and what it is not. When my feet faltered even after such painstaking guidance, he would be livid. When my man is angry, he has no idea what he speaks.

One day, I retorted, "You can't deride me like this!" I flung a challenge — "Can you prove yourself in the kitchen?" He took it in good earnest and for one week played the unpaid chef. Although he did not prove himself spectacular with the ladle, he managed to drive home a point — he was not going to give up until I developed the skills that would enable me to work with him.

Suriyanarayanan

She had a cloistered childhood. She seldom travelled by bus — only autos took her to school and college. Although she had obtained a master's degree in Commerce from a Tiruchi college, she had no plans to take up a job. This stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud attitude clashed with my idea of what a woman should do with her life. I used to tell my friends that I would marry a woman "who wants to prove herself in some area of expertise".

I have moulded her into this image, but the process was difficult, to put it mildly. She would switch off the computer as if it were a television set and the pictures she took were cross-framed — she simply did not know how to hold a camera. Let me cut to the chase. Today, she can execute fifty per cent of what is required of a photo restorer and she is a `modelling photographer' to boot. As cross-frames are common in a `model portfolio', she says she had a natural bent towards this specialisation.

(AS TOLD TO PRINCE FREDERICK)

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