Nurungukal…

        Off late my memory is fading, may be due to the grip of the dreadful diabetes which has subdued most of my vital faculties and caused a general debility. I had to face many embarrassing situations because of the inherent absent mindedness. Even during my school days my memory failed to support me to score good marks. Yet I managed somehow to mug up paragraphs by burning midnight oil and spew them in my answer papers. I envied always my friends who effortlessly recited stanza after stanza of Malayalam poetry, whereas on several occasions I had to draw a blank ,when my memory failed to remember a crucial link word. The excruciating pain which I had to endure and the agony to contain my tears before the entire class, especially the girls, when the Malayalam munshi twisted my ear with the help of a chalk piece is still haunting me.

       Nowadays I am in the grip of absentmindedness, which very often pushes me into embarrassing predicaments. Very often I am at the mercy of my wife to retrieve vital objects and documents. During my hay days when I was in the service there was a place for everything and everything was in its place. It was so a spic and span situation. Now things are in disarray. Not a day passes without a few hours spent on search. If today it was for locating the car key, yesterday it would have been for a revenue documents. My adhaar card, driving license, prescriptions etc are always like vanishing wonders. And as we both grapple to retrieve a doc., another one which was elusive a few days ago surfaces to our surprise from nowhere. I have seen that she has all the patience on earth to scan through each and every source, as the old saying goes, “ kuntham poyal kutathilun therayanam “.

       I had seen my mother tying a knot on the corner edge of her cloth to work as a reminder. She believed that as the knot touches your hand it would trigger an alarm in your memory about the purpose for which it was intended for. She was right too. We often relate our forgetfulness to that of skinks ( arana ). It is believed that this creature seldom bites us, as it forgets its intention just before it reaches you. I have seen often they stop abruptly and turning away without doing any harm. But it is also well known that once it succeeds in inflicting the venom there is no remedy, only sudden death.

         There was a friend of mine in Pondichery who used to tell a very interesting incident in his life, attributed to his absentmindedness. It is the worst than the ones I had seen in the film about a professor. My friend and his wife went to partake in a wedding function. As usual it was a get together of his old friends and relatives. Being a never satiating conversationalist he got engaged in rewinding old stories with a childhood friend and after the feast accompanied the friend to pay a courtesy call to his family. When the friend’s wife enquired him why he did not bring his wife he bitterly remembered about his lapse. He had forgotten to pick his wife from the hall. When he returned to pick her up she was as usual sitting in the porch throwing a mischievous smile at him as if it was yet another unintentional lapse from him.  

          Many years ago I had to face a situation in which my forgetfulness was the main villain. We had the habit of saving the one rupee coins that came to us. These coins were an offering to Lord Krishna of Guruvayoor. We had to attend a function related with the choroon of the child of one of the relatives of my wife. As usual we had taken our collection of coins for offering. There was a huge crowd in the temple as there were a number of marriages. So our function was delayed unduly. Somehow we managed to reach the sanctum sanctoram and in a hurry was inserting our coins one by one into the huge Bandaram .  From nowhere a priest came to us and told me to empty the bag through the opening at the top of the Bandaram . Without a second thought I did as per his wish. With a loud sound the contents descended into the fathoms of the Bandar while as an electric wave shocked me about the loss of my purse and car key etc. I had before entering the temple as an abundant caution put my purse and keys in the same bag in which the coins were also kept. My appeal to the authorities to retrieve my belongings was gently denied and I had to leave the temple like a squirrel who had lost a mango.(andi poya annan ). Never ever again I had taken my purse and other things to a temple...

        One of my brothers in law was another person who was never sure whether he had locked all the doors securely. He would check and recheck each and every one again and again. Not once, many times.  Not satisfied with this exercise he will return to the house from the bus stop to ensure the safety once again.

          Nowadays the beep and tinkle of my mobile reminds about my daily routine from dawn to dusk although its punctuality irks me at times. The recent pandemic has very often compelled me to return home to pick up a mask. There are some good aspects also in being forgetful. I could conveniently scrape out many bad events from our life, which otherwise would dent our mental equilibrium. Friendships and even family relationships sustain effectively depending on our ability to erase unwanted and unpleasant events. That is the first lesson I have learned from my parents. On the contrary if they were not on forget and forgive mode, many an issue might have marred the cordial atmosphere of our family. The present shortfall in my mental faculty is a blessing in disguise and I really enjoy it…

           Perhaps if I had not resisted my mother to swallow the bitter juice of that little leaf known as bhrahmi …  my memory chip would be vibrant even now. It’s too late …eh….