Forgetting

Just as he was lowering himself into the sitting room sofa with a new book, Mr Roy felt a certain dryness behind his throat. He recognised it as a craving for some afternoon tea. He was looking forward to reading in the peace of the afternoon. He discovered it on his daughter's book shelf a few mintues ago. He could spend the next two hours with it and could do with a large cup of tea to go with it, he thought. 

This was a book by Perumal Murugan. He found it while dusting his daughter's book shelf. He was preparing for her arrival from Delhi. He wanted the room to be as spick and span as possible before she came. At least the book shelves needed to be dusted. 

He had vaguely heard the name of Murugan before but never felt the urge to read him. But on the cover when he saw glowing comments from the New York Times he felt like giving it a go. Growing up in the late 70s and 80s Mr Roy had learnt to not like Indian authors writing in English. Not that there were too many of them. There was one Ruskin Bond but he never felt compelled to read him. The closest that came to his Indian English reading was Jim Corbett, who was a white Sahib who lived in the mountains and though Indian for all practical purposes his native language was English. As an adult he read some English translations of Indian writers but never quite got round to finishing any of the Amitav Ghoshes or Upamanyu Chatterjees - new age Indian writers who wrote principally in English. 

He was not sure in what category to put Jhumpa Lahiri or Kiran Desai. They were ethnic Indians but they could not really be called Indians in the strict sense of the term. Both lived in New York or at least grew up there. 

He thought he would give Murugan the benefit of doubt and read his Pyre. He was currently struggling with Toni Morrison's Beloved. The book made no sense to him. He could not understand what was going on. Obviously the agony of black life in America is the general theme, as all her books were. But the writing style is such that he could not even make out who was who or how they were linked to one another. When he read her Bluest Eye he was quite moved by it. So moved that he bought his daughter some four or five Toni Morrisons for her 22nd birthday. But he was making very little progress with Beloved. Giving it up would mean a literary cowardice of sorts if not defeat but not being able to progress was hampering his reading habit.

He hated watching reels on facebook or instagram. But that is what he has been endlessly doing of late. They have given it a new name - Doom Scrolling He did not like doing it but it was like a dreadful addiction. You know it is bad for you and you must quit, yet you have that craving for a snort every now and then and get sucked into the whole cycle before you could pronounce Zuckerberg.

As Mr Roy lifted himself up and proceeded to make tea, he suddenly remembered that he had already boiled some water in the kettle before going to his daughter's room looking for a book to read with the tea. All it needed was for the water to be poured into the tin cup with two tea bags. He was a little embarrassed by the fact that he had altogether forgotten about the boiled water. 

He has noticed that of late he keeps forgetting such little things these days. 

This morning as he was coming back from Dalhousie after dropping his wife at work, he suddenly remembered that he was to go to a friend's house to collect his current year's swimming club membership card. Swimming for the current year would start in a couple of weeks. At the last traffic signal before his friend's house he took the correct turn and went to his house, instead of taking the other turn and coming back home. 

This friend renewed his swimming club membership every year for him. He knew someone who knew people at the club. You need connections to get membership renewed every year. He never questioned it. This is how things are in Calcutta. Even for the trivialest of things you need connection. His friend and he sign up every year routinely for the 8.30 to 9.15 pm slot. But they are not very regular swimmers. Mr Roy likes to think that he is a swimmer and has a membership to stay fit.

Mr Roy has developed his father's habit of getting people's names completely wrong. His father used to call people by funny names that had no connection to the person's actual name. For example, his sister-in-law who was Tinku became Tuntuni for him. Tuntuni of course is the little tailor bird in Bengali. 

Mr Roy cannot remember names of people. He often cannot remember certain nouns and struggles to say common words like kettle or comb. At a  bird watcher's meet last year the local newspaper reporter who knew him wanted him to introduce her to other important bird watchers. He found it almost embarassing that he did not remember half the names of the people. He somehow managed the situation by referring to the person's home town rather than the name. "Here meet our man from Maldah. He is a teacher but keeps going to different habitats in and around Maldah and discovers many important and unusual birds" - while saying all this he was desperately trying to remember his name. Finally he gave up and quietly walked somewhere else so that the two of them could exchange their names in his absence.

Mr Roy's parents had very unusually long lives. Both of them suffered severe memory loss towards the end of their life. His father went completely silent and remained immobile in bed for a couple of years before his death. He would often ask his wife, Mr Roy's mother, the same question about very trivial things and then get into a loop asking the same question over and over again. His mother, very patiently answered him every time. But after a few months he stopped asking or saying anything whatsoever. Finally one Sunday morning he just died. 

His mother suffered a more or less similar fate. She did not go silent but had other memory loss issues. She forgot the idea of time and place. It makes Mr Roy very sad to think of how his mother completely changed into someone else. She had lost all sense of time and place or even who she was and how she was linked to the others around her. 

They say the brain shrinks with age. His mother remembered everything about her childhood days though. Mr Roy used to open Google maps and zoom into the Bagbazaar area where she grew up. He would ask her about arbitrary names of various lanes and bylanes and her face would light up. She could almost guide him turn by turn through these lanes. She could quite clearly visualise these roads. And if he made a small mistake with any of the names she would immediately correct him. 

Mr Roy knows his childhood neighbourhood of Kalighat equally well. But walking down Sadananda Road the other day he could not remember whose tailoring shop it was where some of the elders used to spend hours chatting. It has now been converted into a garrage and a white Audi stays parked there. He could remember Nandi-da's grocery store just before this shop but this old man's name totally escaped his brain. He could clearly remember the old man's face but not his name. It was much later that he remembered he was called Beni Babu.