Memories assail us constantly. As we grow older, their onslaught becomes more aggressive and intense. But they must be endured, and better still, embraced.
What are Memories?
Are memories a sin, or are they a salvation? Are they a pain or a palliative? Do they torment, or do they teach? Do they augment or attenuate our lives?
Living without memory is unimaginable, even impossible. We seldom reside in the present; our forays into the past and future are shaped by our memories. Thoughts of the future are not anchored in the present but in images of the past. It is strange how we cling to fragments of the past while awaiting our futures.
Memories arrive in strangely divergent ways, in swathes and slices, large and small. They encompass childhood days at school, a failed love affair, early years of marriage, bitter rivalries in a budding career, spells of success and triumph, battles against deadly infections, and the dismay of life-defining defeats. They come without sequence, playing to and fro on our mental screens.
They cascade, sometimes torrential, often gentle—a cornucopia of endless colours and brilliance, and dullness too. They intermix, interweave, and intersperse through time and space, arriving in waves of varying intensity: some bright, some dull; some clear, some hazy; some soothing, others sickening.
Memories are not still photographs; they are films. They are not single paintings but collages of colourful images. They are not points but packages spread over time and space, tormenting us, teasing us, tingling us, troubling us.
A Kaleidoscope of Emotions
Some memories make sense; many appear absurd. Some are intense, others frivolous. Some exhilarate us, others exhaust us. Some make us feel upbeat, while others frustrate and depress us.
Memories may fade, but as Kazuo Ishiguro writes in Never Let Me Go, “Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.” So they fade and yet do not.
Can we live without memories? Unequivocally, no! If we lose them, we call it memory loss—a prospect that frightens us and fuels untold miseries. We are seriously ill then.
Such, then, are memories.
Glimpses of Childhood
My earliest memories take me back to my village home. Each morning, I was made to sit in a highchair in one corner of the courtyard, watching my father engage with visitors, settle disputes, counsel, cajole, and sometimes chastise them. It was fascinating to my young mind—the animated conversations, the babble of sounds, the cadence of intonations, and the utter silence when my father spoke. I could spend hours listening to the sounds and absorbing the sights, deciphering expressions and gestures. They were endlessly engrossing. I recall with special delight the intermittent attention directed at me, as many would look in my direction and supposedly say words pleasing to my father.
In this collage, another prominent set of pictures revolved around my mother, sitting next to the hearth in the kitchen. We always ate together in the kitchen, sitting on mats in a circle around my mother. She was the central point of this beautiful family arch. The food was always served by my mother in metallic plates—first to us, the children, then to my father. The youngest received food first, my father last. She baked bread in the flaming hearth and placed it on our plates one by one. These images are so vivid that every meal I have taken recalls this scene. No food ever tasted as delicious as my mother’s cooking. But more than anything, I cherished the conversations between my parents. My mother recounted the day’s events with great embellishment and flourish. It wasn’t the content that captivated me but the sound, the intonation, the rhythm, and the music of their conversation. She was a great raconteur. Much of it I couldn’t follow, but the excitement of the voices, the hushed intervals, her ringing laughter, the gesticulations and the facial expressions fascinated me no end.
Then there was the verandah where my father’s bed was laid out, where I slept in his warm embrace. I recall the courtyard and verandah, from where I silently observed the hues and whispers of summer, spring, and winter, but most vividly, the drizzle and torrents of monsoon rains that delighted and scared me depending on the time of day or night.
A sharp image in my memory mosaic is the house with its high ceilings and cavernous rooms. One indelible memory is of an ancient fan whirring and swinging gently, offering both comfort and a lullaby-like music. Occasionally, it presented the apprehension of detaching from the ceiling and descending on my little frame, adding to the innocence of the memory. I remember the barred window opening to an open space where the swaying branches of a Peepal tree presented shapes and images that suited my imagination. The redolent ‘Ratrani’ shrub embraced the bars, filling the air with a fragrance that remains fresh and intoxicating. This same window allowed both gentle breezes and disturbing gusts of wind, pleasing me by day and intimidating me by night.
Reinforcement of Innocence
All memories expand with time. Now, past seventy years of age, I note that memories are beautiful because the emotions related to those events have intensified. The recollection is far more vivid and sharp than how one felt then. In that sense, it is a perfection of an image created many years ago, acquiring brilliance and comprehension not felt at the time. The completeness of emotions is realized through memories, not during the experiences themselves.
Memories are impossible to wish away. They are magical in mysterious ways, their magic lying in their innocence. As F. Scott Fitzgerald says in This Side of Paradise, “I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again. The innocence of those days belongs to then, but I miss losing it and hopelessly pine for losing it again.’
The best tribute to memories is to celebrate them and enjoy their enlarged and embellished sensuality sustained by the cravings of the unconscious. As Gabriel García Márquez aptly puts it, “Heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”
I could not agree with him more.
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