Lighter Vein: Of Fused Bulbs And Forgetful Minds

This is how Dr Sakuntala Narasimhan gets humourous about forgetful seniors and the funny ways they adopt to keep their memory in one place. 

Fused bulb, fused bulb. I come out of the bathroom muttering ‘fused bulb’, and the rest of the family gives me funny looks because the bulb in the bathroom is glowing brightly.

I am not off my head. As a senior citizen, I find that my memory is not as good as it used to be, and the only way to ensure that I do not forget something is to keep chanting it repeatedly till I put it down in writing (but then of course, that too doesn’t help – I forget where I noted it down, and hunting for the scrap of paper is one more chore to add to the distractions). Now, where was I? Ah yes, chanting fused bulb.

I am in the middle of writing a short story where the protagonist, a woman, has spent 48 years as a housewife while she wanted to be an academic doing research. She felt like – like what? I was scouting for an appropriate simile when, in the middle of my bath, I thought of a fused bulb. Spent. Useless. Worth nothing. Fit only to be tossed onto the rubbish heap.

I knew from past experience that by the time I came out of the bathroom that simile would have gone out of my mind, as have so many phrases that came to my mind during my long commutes by bus, twice a week from North Bengaluru to Jayanagar in the South. By the time I got off at my destination that “very appropriate phrase” that I had thought of (an arresting opening line, a denouement) would have vanished from my memory.

I did try carrying a small jotting pad in my purse, and once pulled it out to write down a phrase while I was on the bus. The conductor promptly bristled – “Are you noting down my number, to make a complaint, madam?” he demanded. “Last time you noted down details because I did not give a ticket to that pesky woman; it was she who refused to pay the proper fare and threatened to complain that I had abused her…” True, I have seen that woman, a combative flower seller who just hands the conductor two rupees (the minimum fare is five) and says she is only riding for two stops. And I had noted down the route number and time, and sent a complaint…and he was probably penalized by BMTC…

TINA, as the neoliberal economists’ phrase goes – There Is No Alternative — which they apply in their arguments for globalization and free markets; but I am co-opting it in my comments on age-related, capricious memories. Undeterred by the conductor’s hostility, I pulled out my jotter pad on another occasion to note down a phrase before it vanished – and someone jogged by elbow in the crowded bus, the pad fell from my hand and before I could retrieve it a gust of wind blew it out from under the driver’s seat and onto the road where a passing vehicle promptly ran over it. Some six pages of jottings got trashed, a fortnight’s work wiped out. And that was the end of my mnemonics…..

The now-defunct British satirical magazine Punch once carried an article on forgetfulness that I keep recalling. The writer suggested that thoughts were like stuff that we shove haphazardly into a cupboard drawer – when you want to retrieve a particular shirt, you pull out stuff from the drawer, only to find everything else (that old pair of jeans you had misplaced, an old belt you thought you had lost during a trip) except what you are looking for (which you finally locate, at the bottom of the drawer); thoughts are like that, they get lost in the drawers of the brain – sounds plausible, right?

Now, where was I? I got carried away, as usual. I tell you, growing old is no picnic. You begin to ramble, forget and …. What was I trying to say? Ah yes, fused bulb, this began with a fused bulb, now I must scurry and write it down before I forget what I wanted the phrase for…