Representative image showing a person looking up old photos.
Credit: iStock Photo
At 69, I am embarrassed to admit that I am suffering from selective memory loss. While I can vividly remember what I saw and heard years ago when I was a child—it is green in my mind, and I have no difficulty at all recalling it—I find it impossible to remember what I did last Friday. Once, I forgot the registration number of my own scooter at a metro parking lot. I had to call home for the information. The parking attendant got suspicious and did not allow me to take my vehicle without sufficient proof that I was indeed the owner by producing my ID.
I suspect I have a strange neurological disorder. How else can you explain the memories of events from my childhood as if they all took place just a month ago, and a complete lack of recollection of what happened a month ago? It is as if the recent events have slipped into the foggy forgotten zone. I vividly remember the faces, voices, nicknames, and even mannerisms of my primary school classmates. But the faces of many of my collegemates faded away. Even if I rack my brain, I am not able to recall even a single name or face.
My son, to whom I turned for advice, reassured me, saying, “The ability to remember differs from person to person. Our heads are, in a way, like pen drives with a certain capacity for holding information. Some heads are 64 GB, some heads are 32 GB, some heads are just 8 GB like yours, and some heads are not just pen drives but real hard drives capable of retaining and recalling a very large quantity of information.”
The one person who is exasperated by my selective forgetfulness is my wife. The other day, she suddenly asked me if I remembered the colour of her wedding saree. I have forgotten all the details about our wedding. How on earth could I tell her the colour of her wedding saree on that ‘dependence’ day of my life? I blinked for a long minute and said hesitantly, “I think it was green.” Her face turned red, and she exclaimed, “You remember your primary school teacher Parvathy’s favourite saree colour, but you fumble like US President Biden when I ask you about the saree I wore on the most fateful day of our lives.”
Last Sunday, I wrote down the names of girls and boys who were with me when, as Class 5 students, we were taken to the good old Madras Zoo in 1965 on a mini excursion and had lots of fun teasing tigers and lions and making faces at chimpanzees, and I showed the list to her. That was the final straw. She warned, “One more word from you about your school days, and I will hit you with my chapati roller. All your childhood memories will be deleted once and for all.”