Yet Untitled 050 - BELIEVE!

YU Turns 50!

Mar 25, 2023

Dearest YU-ers,

Something captivates me about this photo I took in Goa. At the time I took it, the light was quite low. All the plastic debris on the beach was suddenly invisible and the scene spread before me, sans blemish. The one man-made thing visible in the frame was an appealing object, illuminated from within. It was inviting, it was unobtrusive…

Really, Vas?

Just stop.

What a load of crap. That too, for your 50th instalment!

All it is, Vasant, is a nice photo of a sunset. But beyond that…you’re faffing!

Now we’re talking. Honesty makes great copy. Faffing is toilet fodder. When I wrote that first paragraph, I honestly had no idea what this instalment was about. Not knowing made a pit in my stomach - it was too close to publishing day for comfort.

But, I’ve been here before. 49 times (63 times if you count YU Lite). Many times, I have come dangerously close to failure.

But I have never failed to publish. Hence - I believe - that today too, I will escape failure…and publish.

This is what YU has given me. This is what you have given me, dearest Yet Untitlers. A weekly exercise in belief.

My belief that I will publish was born of consistency and effort. The sustained effort of successfully publishing YU despite life’s crosswinds has shown me that I am capable of more than I give myself credit for. Because, if you asked me a year ago whether I’d be able to consistently publish for 63 weeks…

You know, knowing me, I’d probably have said that I can do it! But I’d have said it while harbouring serious doubts. But simply managing (no word on quality here) has made me one hopeful hillybilly, one who had managed to outrun doubt 63 times (well, 64 - now that #50 is in your inboxes)!

The other day, a beloved Gen Z person (and consistent reader of Yet Untitled) surprised my by saying that she was enjoying shooting photos on film.

Writing YU has been a bit like shooting photos with a film camera. You didn’t quite know what you have until you develop the roll. You believe! Writing this newsletter has been quite like developing an idea in the way you develop a photo in a darkroom. I’ve known the thrill of going to collect photos from a photo studio after they’ve been developed. It’s similar to the thrill of receiving a letter. Gen Z hasn’t grown up with either experience, but the beloved Gen Z person who sought out the same thrill fills me with hope.

Sometimes, analogue photography failed me. The results could turn out far worse than expected. Once, a film roll didn’t spool before a seaside photo shoot under dramatic Mumbai September skies, and I never saw the 36 photographs I had exposed. It was a failure.

But this failure was important. It made me value the whole process of analogue photography more, gave it an edge. The greater possibility of failure made the experience of shooting analogue more acute, more visceral than my experience of digital photography has ever been.

While I don’t know failure yet in my YU journey, I know it from my days as an analogue photographer. I may have avoided it so far in YU, but I know that the inevitable day will come when I don’t publish.

I’m not afraid if it.

Because of YU and you (oh I’m on fire with this pun), I face the possibility of this failure every week - but, as Syrio Forel had said to Arya Stark in Season 1 of Game of Thrones:

"There is only one god, and His name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: 'not today'."

Elsewhere in the TV-sphere - Ted Lasso is back with Season 3. In it, the uppity American Football coach has a sign at the doorway to his office that says “Believe”. What did Ted Lasso’s Belief get him? The seemingly impossible - being able to coach an English Premier League football team, successfully. I really love how the show recurringly uses this ‘Believe’ sign to investigate the meaning of this elusive word.

Years ago, I met another exceptional (borderline) Gen Z-er who showed me a thing or two about the power of belief. I met Gurmeher Kaur on the eve of her Rhodes scholarship interview. She wondered aloud to me about what she might tell her interviewers the next day.

“I think I’ll tell them that I want to go to Oxford because I see myself becoming friends with Malala. I want to do that because she and I will eventually be in the diplomatic or global policy sectors in our respective countries. It would be great if we became friends early - it’d eventually lead to good relations between our countries.”

A few years later, she sent me this photograph:

Here’s a photo of my mom reading Gurmeher’s book that she wrote while negotiating the crosswinds of her undergraduate years.

Belief is great. Belief made Gurmeher an exceptional friend. Belief keeps me publishing. You keep me publishing. You, dear Yet Untitler, have made me a believer.

Thank you ❤️!

Do drop me a line about what your journey over however many weeks you’ve walked along YU has been for you.

“Yet Untitled”

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