‘I recognize your face, but I don’t remember your name’ ! That’s the classic joke for awkward social moments and we venerable senior citizens, are susceptible to these. It’s like having someone’s face right on the tip of your tongue yet it’s eluding you ! That’s how it happens with my contemporaries now. Recently, an old friend candidly said on meeting an old classmate: ‘I recall the name, but I don’t remember the face !’
Fortunately, people excuse our lapses sincewe ‘old and forgetful’ are liable to be foggy. The problem arises when memory lapses come at the most inopportune times. Imagine a situation, where as a fan I recognised my favorite theatre& film actor at an event and went to him but then struggled to recall his name. He understood my predicament and smilingly said ‘I am him’ ! I’vesince become a bigger fan ofthe cool ‘Joy Sengupta’ !
The biggest offenders are doubtlessly the much harried husbands who’ve entered their autumn years and have to depend on the versatile spouses to help them out with tricky names and vital dates. A veteran of 80 years was asked by his relatives ‘why do you still call your wife of fifty years ‘Honey’.. to which he said ‘That’s because I often forget her name’. Such issues never arose in our grandparent’s era – calling the better-half by name was taboo. My Mom being bolder than others, called my Dad ‘Mr Sinha’ at times.
Apart from the malady of forgetting names, birthdays etc. that we face over time, is the mistaken identity problem that even the celebrities are often subjected to. In a widely reported case (thank the social media for keeping tabs on everyone) famed actor ‘Ram Charan’ found himself at the centre of a viral moment after mistakenly referring to pacer ‘Jasprit Bumrah’ as a footballer at an event. Ram Charan issued a public apology calling it ‘genuine human error’ admitting he was forgetful with names. If a hugely successful star can forget another celebrity superstar’s status, why blameindustrious husbands advanced in years, not to miss out a crucial item from the big shopping list.
While there are today many ways suggested to improve one’s memory, let’s look at things from the perspective of an aged mind about remembering the past. With years of working and living life with its highs & lows under many different situations, not all incidents can be retained in the overburdened mind. As is well known, the long-term memory for milestones, achievements,old passions &happy times is often reignited through association but mundane short term incidents of daily life soon fade out. As Cesare Pavase said ‘We do not remember days, we remember moments’ – ultimately !
Working on Living 