The Camera Was the Same

In May 2013, I returned to Diu after six years.

Three friends came from Rajkot. I traveled from Ahmedabad. We spent the weekend near the sea, watching the sunrise, sitting on the sand at night, and giving ourselves time that ordinary weeks rarely make available.

Diu was familiar to me. Between 2003 and 2007, when I worked with domestic clients, I visited it about 30 times.

This visit felt different.

My camera was part of the reason.

Over the previous year, fewer trips, other priorities, and new challenges had moved photography away from the center of my attention. Simply using the camera again felt like an event.

I imagined the camera saying something to me:

You realize the importance of someone when they are no longer as accessible as they once were. Otherwise, they become routine.

On the way home, one thought stayed with me.

The camera was the same. I was the same person. Yet the experience was different.

We often meet a situation through the feeling that arrives first. The other possibility is harder: notice the feeling we want to bring, then see whether it changes how we meet what is already there.

That was not a lesson I had mastered.

It was something I wanted to become better at.

Source note

This is a lightly edited historical note from The choice of feeling, first published on May 5, 2013. The source date and the Almanac publication date remain separate. This Almanac edition was published on August 22, 2026.