Power of memories

Today I saw Kubo and the two strings. I am a movie buff and I have been raving about a lot of movies that Ive seen but I tend to forget about most of them in the week that follows. The last movie that I was dazzled by, one that I still remember, was Now You See Me 2. I hadn’t seen the first one before so right before going to see the sequel, I watched the first one online! It was very interesting! Any movie about magic tricks always excites me 🙂

After that movie, this is one that excited me. It’s an animated movie and honestly most might say it wasn’t even a really riveting story. But somehow, it spoke to me. It talked about the relationship between a kid and his parents. The sweet part was he didn’t even know they were his parents for half of the journey. In the end, he fights evil with the help of his memories as he says they are the most powerful weapons a person can ever hold. It made me think back to my memories and also my fears of losing memories. I’ve always heard people talk about their memories of their childhood as far back as when they were two years old. I don’t have such memories. I have no memory of when I was in America, or when I was in Siliguri. I have no memory of Luku – Chuku or of them pulling out my earring and throwing it out of the van, into the gutter. I know of all these things because I’ve been told about these memories by my family.

Among my own memories, the farthest I can go back, is probably that of Daddy (my paternal grandfather), smoking his pipe and sitting on the dining table making some sandwich. I remember he used to love cooking. He would crack jokes about it too. I remember his laugh, rather his characteristic chuckle. I remember trips to Calcutta when on reaching home, he would come in with a jar of toffees and tell me that there’s a bowl of baked beans in the fridge. I remember going to Serampore and the routines there but that’s more due to following the exact same routine for almost all my life. I have very few memories of my early days in Mumbai as well. For some reason, I have a feeling that i had a very rough time due to being made fun of my hairstyle (my mother chose that time to make me bald) and i also have a faint recollection of a particular time when i scraped my knee while playing in the evening and the bandage had come off while i was in school and i was somehow very embarrassed about it. I cant remember exactly why i was embarrassed but i remember that incident. This was in my first school in Mumbai. My second school, St. Josephs was overall a better experience but then one incident is all i remember from those days. It was the first time i was actually very scared. I didn’t know what was happening at the time and when I was a little older and started understanding things about the world more, it became more clear. My maths tuition teacher behaved very oddly and tried to come on to me. I didn’t know what to do and i still remember the fear I felt clearly. I went and told my mother everything. When my father came home, they handled it. I don’t remember how and what they exactly did but I just never had to see him again. On a positive note, I remember Sister Dolores and her dog Rover. I remember petting Rover everyday. I remember Shekhar, the owner of the school bus I used to go to school in. I remember the bus conductor who would call me “basho” meaning “sit down” in Bengali because he knew i was Bengali. I remember i had a friend named Anjali and I remember I went to her house once. Don’t remember anything else. I remember other classmates like Sana Dharani, Samantha and Fiona. I remember there was an older student in the bus, Maria. I remember the conductor called Samantha a “puppy” because of her long pigtails which resembled a dog’s ear. Every time I went by that area, I recognized my school. After that I remember more. My third school is very clear in my memory. My student number was 875 which was coincidentally given to another student who i knew personally as one of my father’s colleague’s daughter. Although I enjoyed my time in school a lot because of various crushes, I didnt really have mane close friends. The ones I did have (Uttara, Manali and later on Rajeshree) weren’t really close friends for long. I remember hating every minute that I spent with my tuition teacher at the time, Vishakha Miss. She never inspired me to study and on top of that she always used negative reinforcements. That always seemed to make matters worse. I actually liked studying a little for the first time when I started studying at Pronoti’s place. She was initially just my Hindi Teacher but later on, dont know what happened exactly, but I started going to Pronoti for all subjects! Studying became fun, partly because she was nicer and partly because I had a huge crush on one of the other students who incidentally was one year older. I was never really a very visible kid in school and somehow I felt comfortable being the invisible kid. The first time I started being a visible kid was when I joined my next school, Naval Public School (later changed to Navy Children School). I started loving maths and chemistry to a small extent, because of my teachers Neerja and Sreena. Maths became my favorite subject, something that continued till the end of class 12. I became extra confident in Algebra. I thank Neerja and my tuition teacher for a very short while, Mrs Lakshmi from Harbor Heights. I began topping the class along with my first close friend ever, Soumya. She and I remain good friends till date. For the first time I was a prominent member of a group and also pretty visible in the eyes of the teacher and all for the right reasons. I remember almost all my teachers since then. I remember moments spent with friends, moments of fights, even fights over silly things like boys. Though I was out of the race soon enough because I had a fan of my own. I remember every moment with him. I remember times spent with him. I remember fights at home over my marks when i didn’t do well in school. I remember one specific incident when mum got mad at me because someone prank called at my home and at Tina’s home and complained about us saying that we were misbehaving with boys and she believed the person who called and we had a terrible fight because of that. I remember telling her about Pooja’s (my “best friend” at the time) parents and I also remember her words on hearing about Pooja and so many other conversations we had sitting in her room. I came closest to my mother during those years. Most of my memories of my mother are from those times. We fought, we cried, we shared, we became friends. Even though I would raise my voice against my parents at the time, my memories always remind me that it was during those years that I started feeling really lucky that I had the set of parents that I did. They always were friends to me but they had a hold on me which I feared. It was a perfect balance. Even today, I am awed at how easily they managed to make it so simple.

I remember every single thing about my college days and the times after that till date. Sometimes I wish I could forget some of the things that I still remember. Most of the time I may not remember an incident but I remember how it made me feel and that itself is enough to either lift my spirits of make me feel like the whole world is out to get me. My biggest regret is that in my really short life of 27 years, I have very few happy memories compared to the pile of memories that make me feel sad or angry. This is what I believe makes me who I am. Its very hard to explain to people why I am the way I am. I am very anti social though I must admit, I am making efforts. I work hard to meet people and seem friendly and talkative too. Some friends would vouch for me in that department. But only the people closest to me know who I really am and it is very sad that that list consists of only my father and a handful of others. Upon self reflection, I believe my memories have made a deep impact on me in the sense that it has made me closed off to new opportunities/possibilities. Its hard to isolate the reason for it. A factor not helping is probably the fact that I keep hoping for a life that I have always dreamt about and when my dreams and expectations from the people closest to me break, I shut down even more.

I have everything a person could possible dream of. I have a very loving family. I have a well paying job. I have my own apartment and a car. I even have my own fish tank to keep me company. Every day I contemplate adding another member to the family, my very own dog but I don’t for fear that I wont be able to take care of it. I don’t have any loans on my head. I have zero responsibilities on my head. All in all, i have hardly anything to be worried about. But I am not happy. I don’t know what makes me happy. I don’t have any purpose in life other than the fact that I cant lose this job so I have to be better at it everyday. I am forcing myself to make my career my purpose. Sometimes I sit and reflect on my life and force myself to remember my memories to reinforce some of my beliefs and help me get by some days by remembering what my mother and I used to talk about. Memories are my constant companion. Memories make me who I am. Memories are who I am.