Remember?

 Soda says this post goes 'all over the place'. Which is kinda true. You've been warned.

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I have had an epiphany. No wait, epiphanies move like lightning. They strike you and everything looks different. This isn't that. More, a realisation. What started as a hazy suspicion has cleared and confronted me in the full truth. And the truth is, I don't remember a thing.

You heard right.There are no files in this disc. No songs on this tape. I don't have memories. Perhaps I had them before, but now, nada. A revelation such as this isn't the easiest of truths to handle. I gave the thing some thought and decided at the very beginning that this kind of memory loss will not result in a three book, three movie franchise. And Matt Damon will not play me.

At this point, you will be forgiven for dismissing this as a crazed young girl's tirade about forgiving and forgetting (to arrive at the most obvious cliche) and so on. But after much trying, there is no other way of looking at it. It has happened. It is true. I don't have memories. (Anymore. I think). And I will keep from repeating that joke about me not being young anymore, because both of us (you, dear reader, sparse and unconvinced, me your post guide for the next six minutes) must agree that that joke is past its prime.

How is it possible that in the face of such amnesia(if you will), I am calmly proceeding to write a multiple thousand word blogpost and not running around, arms flailing, seeking questions from anybody who may care to answer, important details of my life such as who I am, where I am from, and what my favorite pokemon is, etcetera. Of course I haven't entirely forgotten. No. That would be taking things a bit literally.

It must have been a little before midnight, when I was hovering near the mirror, looking for something and chuckling to myself at a joke someone had cracked earlier that evening. Fairly normal, so far. I looked and looked; crouching under the bed, shifting stacks of books, scanning shelves. And then I stopped looking. I was still chuckling. At that joke. And what the joke was, I couldn't for the life of me, remember.

When I was a child, I was often caught of bursting into a room, desperate to say something and promptly forgetting what I was going to say. An aunt taught me to retrace my steps so I would remember how the thought first came. This used to help, for the most part. So I walked around the entire house, trying to remember why I started chuckling. To no avail. I had no memories of the evening that I was sure had been good.

I then realised, that this wasn't even new. Over the last few years, I have progressively forgotten more. It wasn't like everything I knew vanished(That would have been some serious shit. Ronald Reagan, I've wanted to be like you. Not that way though). It was all there. But I forgot it was.

It is as if all that I knew was stored in a huge, large room (as large as your opinion of me will allow) but where I stand is in the anteroom. With a thin curtain drawn over the doorway to the large repository that is my memory. So if you were to quickly ask me if I remembered the time I drove around Double Road drenched to the bone, when the water on the roads was knee high, I'd have to reach into that repository, look around a little, find the memory and then nod vigorously. But it would take time and effort.

It is a little troublesome, this scheme. Especially if your perception of the world you live in and the people who inhabit it are all a cumulative result of your past with respect to them. This loss of quick and easy access to your own memories will mean that your perceptions too will freeze. And when I look around me to see people whose perceptions of the world around them has been immobile for a while, I feel very strongly about not turning out like them.

Amma often says that if she had the choice to erase memories, she'd do so gladly. But then a lot of things are worth remembering. And so her petitions to God are put on hold. Until the next time she considers the thought, that is.

Amma might offer clues on my current state. You see, my mother has a fixed set of stories to narrate. I have heard all of her stories, to the point where I often complete these stories for her. Just so she won't complete them herself. It's amazing how each narration starts with the sort of enthusiasm one would reserve for what happened that afternoon and not in the sumer of '85. This can only mean two things 1)She miraculously remembers her stories from thousands of years ago, vividly. 2)She has a fixed set of memories about each phase of her life to mark like milestones and she has, like I am coming to, shunned/forgotten(I don't know which) all else.

I was talking to a friend years ago (In what now seems to me was a ritual of matching sob stories and trying to one up each other on list of tragedies suffered) and on memories, he said that he doesn't remember certain bits of his earlier days because his childhood was so tough.

I can hardly claim such things. I have had a nice kind of childhood. And my memories from then are the clearest. Little things. Like sitting in a car one evening in the 90s maybe when a relative was in hospital. It was dark and there was breeze. No vehicles and the trees were in charge. Black, blue and green. And ghostly appearances which turned out to be groups of walking nurses on break walking around on Mallya hospital road. I remember wondering why anybody would want to be a nurse. Why anybody would want to witness pain and suffering and death on a daily basis. Thinking their stockings looked uncomfortable. How did they manage to keep them so white and spotless?

I remember clearly, yes.

Why then can I not remember what I did three days ago? One possible explanation is that things have become less remarkable. And like suicide, homicide, genocide is explained these days, maybe it's just boredom.

I have thought about this for long periods of time (restricted of course by my attention span) and concluded that boredom isn't it. I can't have been bored for the last three years. I don't remember being bored so long. Why then have my memories been sneaking away to hide behind the curtain? Do I not love them enough?

Talking of memories, I have been finding a number of precious pictures this last week. We unearthed my parents' wedding album recently. Everybody looks young. And hopeful. My mother was extremely beautiful. And as gullible looking as she is today. I found a picture of my sister with her best friend from school on a class trip to somewhere in Chennai. And the best. A ceramic plate photo-souvenir of my father in Hong Kong. He is wearing a stiff suit. Smiling. He is posing with Chinese idols of good fortune. He looks healthy and strong. I will however always remember the softer, older him, recovering and, in my eyes, in need of care and attention.

What effects do photographs have on memories? Most of the people I know seldom look at them. They don't seem to acknowledge what they were like, back then. Or maybe it isn't important. Some of the older ladies I know treat these albums like trophies of their youth. In thick musty albums of black cardboard, protected by thin crisp paper that crackles as you flip it; they are thin young women, their hair neatly combed back, flowers in their braids; wearing light colored sarees, sitting with their sisters and looking serenely at the camera. These are the pictures they will show to their grandchildren. Look how pretty your grandmother was. We were young, too once. (Carrying a feeble mark of protest.) What do you know of our days in the sun. Now, it is all gone. The last bit said with as little resentment as possible. These photographs are solid manifestations of their memories.These two entities shake hands and agree to provide them with favorable snapshots of their past. 'I agree, if you agree' say the photographs to the memories officiously before handing them the dull packages in which their images of their pasts rest. While this may be a somewhat cruel way of looking at it. Nothing is as sweet as seeing the thin smiles old photographs bring on the smiles of people.

Then there is the watching of video tapes of weddings and nameless ceremonies of which there are crates in my family. Every year these tapes are retrieved, dusted and played dutifully. Someone is always getting excited about how someone trips now, or laughs now, or breaks into a jig now and explains what it is that X is whispering in Y's ear. And each time, everybody sits down to note with amusement how half the people in the tape are now dead. We even kept count once.

I am still unclear on why memories are keeping distance from me. Remembering shouldn't take so much effort. Memories, like refrigerators when a good game is on, should be at arm's length.

I realise some times, that I need memories. Specific ones. I need them to be close to me. Especially when people who these memories involve all live far away. Without these memories, the relationships I share with these people loses something very vital and important.

My mother sits next to me now, playing with a musical jewelry box-- something my father got for her from one of his tours when they were newly married, thirty years ago. It is one of those mechanical pieces which take manual winding; that play a slow tune when opened. The raaga amma informs me is Kirwani. It is superficially pleasant. But I've always felt troubled by it. It is undeniably sad. And very ruminative. "The first thing he ever got for me" she says, using her favorite phrase for such things. Million memories. Which is ironic because we can't remember so much.