Memories Lived
Our lives are scrapbooks of memories. The mind plays its own games with us. We forget the voice of a dead loved ones, forget the name of the street we spent our childhood on or worse still forget ourselves.
If someone was to ask me to talk about my life my scrapbook of memories would be haphazardly presented. My earliest memory was of using a blade to draw blood from my five year old fingertips or writing notes that I wanted to run away. Who would have known I was prone to depression since I was a little kid.
Memories crowd my mind. I seem to live as much in the past as I do in the present. I remember my elder sister trying to pull me out from under the sofa I was stuck under. I had grown and squished myself in a space that no longer could provide a safe haven from the angry world.
I remember a street dog sleeping behind the four-seater since the door of our house was always left open to let guests in and the street dog inevitably, habitually, slipped in and was routinely shooed off.
I remember our neighborhood being more entertaining than any Ekta Kapoor serial. A sister hit a brother with a brick over property dispute and another neighbor got roaring drunk and cussed his brothers loudly on the road and we watched the sagas play out in the dead of the night like other neighbors did with our lights switched off.
I remember the 84 riots. I remember the Babri Masjid clash. I remember the Mandal Commission. I remember fire, screams and boots marching down our roads while I held a warm glass of milk in my hands at seven in the morning and peeked out of the window. I remember the smell of fear.
Memories swing from one end of the pendulum to another. Bits and pieces return but never the entire picture. Sitting on the loft of a cupboard and jumping down from there on to the bed testified to our childhood fearlessness or the utter lack of ethics when despite knowing that my sister knew I was reading her diary I'd go hunting in her room looking for her diary; read and snicker that she had read my diary.
I remember not liking my first kiss and not liking my second one either. I remember running after my best friend's husband. Both of us roaring drunk. Him remembering a fight he had with his wife and me trying to stop him from running around because he had my friend in tears.
I remember my father's toes peeking out from a door left ajar before he left for the hospital from where he returned dead and gone forever. I remember my sister kissing his cheek before we left him in the hospital. I remember holding back my urge to kiss him. I remember thinking how soft his hair looked- black, satiny and getting sparse on top. I remember how heavily he put his head against the hospital pillow.
I remember my mother holding back her tears when I sat with her and she didn't tell me he had died. I had an exam the next day. She just sat there and my aunt kept telling me to go study; that my mother wanted some time alone.
I remember so much. I remember death, happiness, tears and moments of stillness when nothing would move me. I'd remember moments when I would want to leave everything. Moments of complete darkness when I would want to curl up and die within my mind.
I remember moments before my marriage when I was scared of the happiness I felt. I remember the cries of my newborn children which still ring strong in the ears of my mind. I remember my husband loving them even before I saw their wailing faces. I remember so much and so much of the past makes me what I am today and yet my past slowly but surely fades and becomes brittle like old photographs.
How much will I remember of years lived? How many memories would die before I do? How much of my past will I readily let go without suffering their loss? I miss those pieces that I cannot remember. A life lived and still being lived but forgotten as I go on living.
Posted by Deepti Lamba at 09:22 AM 
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