There are so many but at the moment none comes to mind really. If my memory was so good, I would not be writing this blog anyway. For those of you who did not know, I started this one because I had forgotten the password to my previous blog eccentricscribbler. Ah well, so what then is this key book memory thing all about? Simple. These are two stories, and my life and yours are peppered with such stories everyday. The only difference is that I suddenly realized (I too have a brain that sometimes works) they are telling me something about the way my memory works. Then I had a second brainwave (that makes it two in a day!) to share it with you, and ask if you too have come across such stories in your everyday life. You see I live with the constant fear that I had gone bonkers many years ago (and my neighbors knew it by the time I was barely seven or eight, and schoolmates roughly around the same time, but more on that some other day) and an occasional reassurance or two from you sane souls might just go some way in persuading me that I may not have altogether crossed the Rubicon yet. For those who love and swear by their Hindu/Indian/native/Bengali culture and civilization more than I do—as someone who hardly understands what these terms mean—I am willing to replace Rubicon with Laxmanrekha, but let’s not get stuck there please.
It happened a couple of days ago, at around 2130 in the evening. The day, incidentally, had begun on an ominous note. I woke up to discover that for some reason or the other there was to be no water supply in the locality where I live in a tenement for which I pay Rs. 10 every month as rent. No, your eyesight is alright, you read it correctly. Now please don’t ask more questions or raise your eyebrows and read on. To preempt all your queries, let me tell you that I have the good fortune to be accommodated in a place where people talk about revolution like you talk about money and/or sex and/or god and/or family and/or friends, and in effect manage to successfully threaten the authorities to perpetuate McDonald’s happy price menu for everything they need, until they accumulate enough academic credentials to fly over to McDonald’s own country and keep returning to this famished land for lecture trips every winter. In case you want to know how different I am from this crowd, I have no clue except that I perhaps don’t mind admitting that I am a bit of a coward and as such don’t mind a revolution if it does not devour me, my family or people I care for. So, we were about to begin to lament the taps running dry on this inauspicious morning.
But I am decidedly not one to sacrifice my personal comforts just because many in my neighborhood can’t afford them. I called up a senior who stays close by and he assured that he had enough water for me to drop by for a bath. Good that he did or else I would have made him forego his own bath and call his friends and contacts till I had my way. Whistling, I jogged off to his place with my shorts on and with my clothes for the day neatly folded in a fashionable recycled paper bag (which I flicked from a famous friend whose name I drop all the time), so as not to have to return to my goddamned unwatered place till water supply resumes later in the evening (revolutionaries ensure that it is usually restored within the same day, whether the rest of India dies of famine or not-I love revolution!). Bathing done, I carried on with the daily erosion of my sins. In case you did not know what this phrase means, ask any of your Bengali friends. This has to do with salvation, getting rid of the cycle of rebirths and all those noble concepts.
With the day’s work done, I returned, whistling as usual, to my room at around 2130. And then the penny dropped. I had no clue where I left the room keys. I had been to at least four places during the day, and the farthest of them was about 20 kms away from where I stay. The pity was the second and the third furthest places were pretty close to the furthest one. Second, my roommate, who stays out four days in a week anyway, was nowhere to be seen. Third, I had no intention to admit to my neighbors and friends that I had once again lost my keys, especially because it happens every second month or so and this time it was not even a month. I mean I let you guys laugh at me all the time anyway and you could do with one occasion less.
I at once decided to call this senior of mine who lives close by and is used to bailing me out of all sorts of troubles. Problem was at that particular moment he had been hosting a friend who does not get along too well with me, because I had once hopped on to an autorickshaw he had hired, without asking for his permission, among other profound differences of opinion. He is a gem of a person actually and has taught me much in life, including manners, so please don’t read too much into this incident. We talk and all that but make sure we make an appointment before we do so. Since neither this friend and I enjoy unannounced company of each other anymore, my senior advised that I come an hour or so later. Fortified with a place to spend the night, I now boldly called my roommate and informed him that I was going to break the lock the next morning and pay for a new lock. He rather loved the prospect of a new lock for the room as long as I paid for it.
With some time to spare now, I merrily went into a cybercafe and lost myself into mailing and chatting with the few friends who are still around, largely the ones who still don’t insist on prior appointments but politely ask me to call later if and when they are busy. After about an hour I set off towards the senior’s place, the fashionable recycled paper bag still in my hand. It was then that I had a casual look at the contents of the bag again and the epiphany struck me. Hadn’t I squeezed in that damned shorts of mine in this very bag after I had my bath and put on the ‘formal’ clothes in the morning? And isn’t this the same shorts with two pockets that I had on when I had been locking the room in the morning? Could it then be that I had kept the keys in the left short pocket (that’s what I do everyday) and forgotten to transfer it into the left trouser pocket (that is also what I do everyday), possibly because the surrounding where I usually perform this ritual was slightly different that day? Obviously you can work out by now that I had no more reason to trouble my senior that night.
The day after passed by uneventfully in that I managed not to assault this senior’s tolerance with a fresh personal calamity or displayed no noticeable callousness to the rest of the world, but I am not so sure really because neither the senior nor the world is writing this post.
But yesterday I did it again. This time it was in the afternoon, just after the unsuspecting senior had sponsored a sumptuous lunch and I substantially lightened his purse in gratitude. Then I went to the local railway counter with him where he bought some tickets and was about to pay a thousand rupees more than the fare before the lady in the counter kindly informed him that Indian railways could well survive without his generosity thank you very much. But I must have already subconsciously decided to try the generosity of the Indian Railways staff a bit more and gleefully left a library book and a few photocopied portions of it right in front of the ticket counter. Then I forgot all about it and both this senior and I blissfully devoted ourselves to enjoying a very good lecture on account keeping practices during the Mughal times. In fact, we reported to the venue well ahead of time and I utilized the time by promptly getting into a chat with a friend who normally sleeps during that time but was incidentally awake yesterday and kind enough to bear with my intrusion.
Midway through this wonderful lecture I had a most noble inclination to take some notes. And that was the first time I actually realized that I was not carrying those papers, and now you know why ignorance is called bliss. I visualized the range of possible consequences at once. For one, the library fellows would summarily banish that friend of mine in whose name the book was issued (for your kind information, my own library card disappeared nearly a year ago and my relation with books is too distant for me to worry about getting a duplicate; this book I took out for yet another friend who studies regularly) out of this university. Second, I had not enough money at that moment to purchase it from the market to save the library member friend from what looked like certain academic exile. Third, I had to think of a fresh excuse to persuade the friend whom I had promised to get the book to postpone the delivery by a few more days. I have always had this remarkable naïve faith in myself that if I survived the present catastrophe, I’d somehow repair all the damages I have caused to everyone all my life. Perhaps this is what is called the grandeur of delusion.
But as usual, almost instinctively, I ran, without bothering at all about how a roomful of attentive scholars would react to some madcap scooting across the room while the lecture was on, to this senior who had been sitting across the room. He most kindly made sense of my desperate ramblings (mercifully I still had the sense to speak in whispers) and advised me to immediately return to the canteen where we had lunch. But something within my mind suggested that I rush to the last place visited, which was the Railways ticket counter. I think it is because it was closer to the place where we were then—all my life I have detested having to run long distance and excelled in taking short cuts. Most unfortunately though, the lady at the counter dashed all my hopes of immediate redemption, promptly denying any knowledge of any book or papers having been left there. With my shoulder drooping, I had no choice left but to run long distance, whether I liked it or not.
In about another couple of seconds, I heard the same lady calling me back. I was so convinced by now that I had been hearing strange voices that I chose not to turn around. But then the voice repeated itself and it sounded as if a hundred of my all time favorite songs were playing in the background. Yet another close shave and the lady effectively saved me more blushes than you and I can count together in a day. There lay the lost properties, safely preserved on a table within their office, waiting to surrender themselves to my loving embrace once again.
Well, so what is the big deal really? What is there to write home about an irresponsible chap tying himself up in knots of temporary amnesia all the time, and having had the luck, by chance, to actually get back the lost goods? Nothing much except two points may be. First, the extent of how unnerved we actually get on losing a given thing is perhaps directly proportionate to the perceived rarity of the things we lose. For instance, I suspect that the fact that I had already made arrangements for my night stay must have reduced my anxiety to a large extent. That in turn may have enabled my mind to actually go back to the events immediately leading to the loss, calmly and dispassionately. Once it did so, it could add up the missing pieces of the puzzle, slowly and steadily, culminating in me becoming able to eventually locate it. QED, the anxiety and panic directly emanating from the magnitude of the loss—and the absence of a possible replacement—actually retard the process of recovery. It is, mind you, not the enormity of the loss alone but also the perceived enormity of the loss that contributes to this immediate panic and anxiety. Paradoxically thus it actually helps to forget about the loss for a short while and busy yourself into other pursuits, for your memory to return to its normal functioning. Now of course I don’t know how far that is possible unless you are actually assured of a replacement, as I obviously was. Greater men and women than I can perhaps do that too and I myself know a few of them. I mean there are many greater men and women around anyway, but they usually avoid my company. If you are such a great man or woman, please stay away from me because I may well run after you tomorrow with some stupid problem or another.
Second, to be assuerd that you have a support system around even if you are not able to recover the losses actually arms you with a redoubled vigor to go rededicate yourself to the search all over again. For instance, I did not actually follow the exact instructions of my senior in the second instance, but I think his calm advice at a difficult moment helped me process the reorganization of my own memory with much more confidence and that did the trick. I mean he appeared unfazed and seemed to believe that the sky had not exactly fallen on my head. Moreover, he had enough confidence in me that I could yet try and regain the lost stuff on my own while I myself was not so sure at that moment.
I think that is the key book not only on my memory but on my entire life. All my life I have been losing valuables, material, emotional, personal and professional and then turning to friends and seniors and juniors and teachers for direction in panic and anxiety. And they have had faith on me, and continue to tell me that I can do it and somehow many things have come back. I wonder what I would do without so many kind souls around me. I don’t know how to thank all these people or whether thanking them would not be belittling their contributions to my life. May their tribe flourish. Or else I would not survive. Thanks for patiently listening to a story you already knew.
