We Forget, but We Remember

Yet another year, yet another meeting with friends from yore. The planning was as crazy and as dynamic as it could have ever been. Invited almost fifty friends, and ten turned up, even after the coercing and cajoling (I know, a bad result). But, what was important that those of us who said we’d make it, made it. And what a whirlwind of a Reunion it was.

We spoke of Cancelling Friends, when we met, which has been a pet peeve of mine. And with due respect and acknowledgement of everyone’s concerns and circumstances, we lay to rest all the absences. It’s a good thing that we had these conversations the night before we began our grand weekend.

Our destination was the wonderful Mt. Abu in state of Rajasthan. And we took our own sweet time to get there. But, I can’t let this post become a travelogue. Maybe it is, maybe not.

Some Reunions are just an evening dinner party, quite a few, formal in nature. But not for us: the essence of a Reunion for us has been reliving memories — more so reminding us all of what we have forgotten along the way. It is about laughter that hurts and causes knots in our stomachs. Memory has it’s own fickle attitude and it doesn’t deal an even hand to all of us. And a three and a half decades of a life of struggle, journeys, travel, pain, experiences, and such; doesn’t help — if you want to hold on to memories. Every experience demands a share of our mind, and some old memory has to make way for a new one.

And this is what Reunions have taught me – no memory is lost forever, it just becomes inaccessible over time. Our present weighs down on our past, pushing those memories down. And so, you have friends – who somehow have cracked the accessibility algorithm and can access memories that have been pushed down deeper over more than three decades. Not all of us remember everything, we all have a few pieces of the jigsaw; some of our friends have more pieces. As these memory-master-wizard-friends raised our memories from the depths, (I’d like to call them memory-benders) I felt like a student in my first day of school, the same school where I had spent two years.

Everything he reminded me of, made sense. But, I could not remember it; could not remember all of it like a visual. There were only fragments. And yet, I could not deny the essence of it. I felt it deep down.

Quiet in my corner, I wondered if it was just me; but as I watched the animated conversation around the table, there were notes of exclamations! Yes I remember!

It wasn’t a pure, crystal clear image. From the deep recesses of the mind the pushed memory was raising a hand. Me! Me! It seemed to feebly cry out. This seemed the story with all of us. And from my corner, I was able to see the smile on everyone’s face – when we could access – if not the memory – the essence of the memory.

A very wise uncle of mine, once wrote a letter to my parents after the death of an elder. He said, "God's greatest gift to humans is the ability to forget." Yes it is a double edged sword. The gift works well, when there is pain all around, but the gift does not discriminate. It makes you forget all, over time.

But God has a Plan B. He gave us friends, who remind and rescue only the good and happy memories and makes us smile and laugh till our stomach hurts!

• Friends
• KendriyaVidyalaya
• KVVasco
• Life
• Love
• memories
• memory
• Personal
• Reunion
• School
• writing