Somebody I used to know
The Father just wouldn’t stop hitting the raw nerve.
“Will you be able to handle it?” my partner asked. “Yes,” I said firmly, even though I wasn’t sure if I could. It was his birthday, and we thought of marking the occasion with our favourite pastime watching movies. I had chosen the new Anthony Hopkins film, The Father. I knew it wasn’t a happy story, and I wasn’t sure if I could stomach its premise the world seen through the eyes of an old man suffering from dementia. Having a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s and lost an aunt to dementia, the pain of being forgotten is deeply embedded in the psyche of our family. It also did not help that The Guardian’s review of the film warned, “It’s an experience many people will understandably want to avoid, existing just too close to home for a lot of us, easily swapping Hopkins and inserting a family member in his place.” A few years ago, a scene from the Bollywood film Uri, where the
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When I was 17, I thought I’d found true love. A classmate walked up to me one day, and confessed ‘liking’ me. We were in Class XII then and the sole purpose of our existence was to do well in the board exams next year. Amid solving tough mathematical equations and cramming complex economic theories, the new-found attention was liberating. True love back then meant something that helped you escape from textbooks. It felt good, till we received our board exam results next year where both of us had performed dismally. True love turned out to be puppy love and flew out of the window as we went our separate ways. The only decent institution that allowed me to pursue literature was an all-girls’ college, and while I had reservation about studying there, my parents were convinced otherwise.
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My father never wore a monkey cap during winters. He did not believe in conforming to stereotypes about Bengali men. Rather he did the next best thing he’d wrap his head with multiple layers of men’s shawl while dropping me to school every morning. Seeing the bare heads of other parents, my claims of ‘my daddy strongest’ would often fall flat. Whenever I did request him to brave the cold and take off the shawl, he would warn, “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Social media, where ignorance is celebrated
Then on some days, I seethe with rage when ignorance is celebrated.
When you want to live in darkness, ignorance feels blissful. And what better place to revel in that darkness than social media? It allows anonymity and intangibility that can make us gloat even when we have erred. And gloat, we do. Today, we have influencers born and raised on Twitter whose words carry weight simply because they have managed to acquire considerable following. The ability to hold your attention through tweets and posts have earned them an important place in the social media hierarchy. The fragility of such stardom becomes evident when ignorance, combined with arrogance, passes off as something vital. A recent episode albeit, not of epic proportions made me wonder why we so easily reconcile with inferior judgement.
Forgetting is a way of forgiving yourself anamika@khaleejtimes.com Filed on January 18, 2021
Memory is an asset, but it is also subjective and does not offer a rational view of the events that shaped your life.
On most days, I take pride in remembering every single detail of important events in my life. And then on some occasions, I am embarrassed when I forget to recall small things. The other day, for instance, a colleague attempting to set my eating habits right asked what I had had for lunch all week. I couldn’t remember. My partner later joked that the bland, home-cooked food was indeed forgettable. I laughed, keeping my paranoia to myself.