Memory is the most powerful feature that God gave us living beings. It is through memory that we construct our lives. We remember our childhoods, youths, the journeys that we have undertaken, the places we have visited, the people we have met, the foods we have eaten, the smells we have smelt, the music we have heard. It is through memory that we make sense of ourselves and our relationships and the world around us. 

Memory in relationships

Take for example our earliest relationships, one with our parents, our siblings, our schoolmates and teachers. The childhood traumas, a toxic sibling’s waywardness, a teacher’s misbehavior get etched into our brains as unforgettable memories. Once we grow up, we don’t want to deal with the people who let us down in our childhood. In our youth we meet a new set of good and toxic people in our universities and workplaces. Our brain tends to suppress the memories of the unpleasant experiences and glorify the pleasant ones. We want to revisit the memories of the people who made us happy and brought a smile to our faces. Memories of our first crush for instance, the spots where we met them, the music that reminds us of them become priceless as we grow older so much so that when an old, familiar song plays, it has the power to make us smile and cry at the same time. A bouquet of old memories has the power to both lift us up and pull us down. Some sweet, some sour moments that made up our lives keep haunting us till the end of our journeys on this planet. Kindness of some people that made us idealize them forever, the shrewdness of others that made us cautious of never trusting them again. All of this is possible only because we have memory. If we forgot how people treated us in the past, we would make the same mistakes over and over again. 

They say you should learn from your past but one can only do that if they have a good memory. 

Memory as Time travel

Memory is a powerful tool for time travel. Now I am touching 50, but in my late twenties I was living in Singapore doing my graduate studies. I loved being there. I made some great friends and hung out with them for long periods of time. We walked its many streets and visited its many sites to experience all the charm it offered. I loved hanging out in Little India for all its sights and smells- the smell of freshly cooked idly-dosa, jasmine strings, green coconut water, the dreamy sandal smells from the temples on the street were the many reminders of home. China Town and Arab Street had their own charm. I absolutely fell in love with all the South East Asian food- the mock meats and the gravies, the Laksa and the Thai curries and all the noodles I had during my close to six years in the country. Back in India, I was missing all of that so badly that I felt the urgent need to recreate my life in Singapore here in Delhi. I started eating more international cuisine at home, I diversified my daily cooking, I took the Delhi metro ride every time I missed the Singapore MRT. The one thing I could not find in Delhi was the air-conditioned double decker bus, a common sight on the streets of Singapore. I would climb to the upper deck in those ones and seek the front seat above the bus driver with a big wide glass ahead to see the roads that were bordered by thick trees on both sides. At moments like these, I just close my eyes and time-travel back to those days, imagining myself sitting on the front seat of the upper deck of the double-decker bus in Singapore. My memory helps me do that. And I am able to say – those were the days! Memory helps me understand people and relationships; time travel back to the spaces I loved.

Oh, Memory what would I be without you? But a lifeless doll!