Selective Memory

I was lying in bed last week, gazing at the full moon shining through my window, and as I marveled at its other-worldly beauty, a Tamil poem describing the moon as a beautiful damsel clothed in the blue of the skies that my father had taught me as a child, came to mind. As a little girl, I would lie beside my father and mother on a mat on the open terrace of our house in India at nightfall, and my father would point out to me the different constellations in the dark, velvet sky. On one such occasion, he recited this particular poem by Bharathiar, the famed Tamil poet, and those lines just stuck in my mind. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old then, and strangely enough, almost 4 decades plus later, I was able to recall the lines effortlessly.

Well, one thing led to another, and my mind was a beehive of memories, recalling choruses that I had sung as a child. Then suddenly, from nowhere, the moonlight filling my room brought out yet another poem, just like that. I had memorized "Abou Ben Adhem" as a little girl, and the lines came back to me with crystal clarity, as if it were just yesterday that I had learned them. Strange how the mind works! I cannot recall many things from the recent past, such as what I had eaten for dinner last Saturday, or the times I'd spent with friends at college, or my previous phone number in California, but many things from my childhood jump out at me when I least expect them to. I cannot fully fathom this selective memory process. While my brain seems to be growing new dendrites with each day of my life, and the ones from the recent past seem to be fading away, the older ones from ages ago that have been lying dormant in the nethermost recesses of my brain, seem to spring back to life unbidden. I wish I had a better understanding of the neural connections being made, but one thing I must admit, the human brain is a fascinating organ indeed. Its wonders and capabilities are unmatched, and speak for the unique creation that man is!