Scouting for the Signs... ✍
08 July 1994 💛
#memoriesfromdiaries
We usually began our working hours in school with the heavy hours – Either Math or Botany or Zoology or Physics or Chemistry!
And among these five, our Zoology classes proved the most exciting ones for us, (in spite of the fact that our Zoology Master was the most strictest disciplinarian in town, 🤫of the entire MPC-B fraternity!) - as we shall see soon! 😋
‘Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor’, says William Cowper in his poem titled, “The Task” written in 1785.
Having the same samosas every other evening in the hostel canteen true-proved this dictum to a tee! 😋
And nothing was more exciting for us in the evenings than going for a swim 🏊♂️ with our friends!
The MCC School had (still has!) a posh Outdoor Swimming Pool that was (and is!) the proverbial ‘neighbour’s envy and owner’s pride!’
Whenever we had the time on us, (which we always had) we would grab the time, bigtime, swainggg jump into the true-blue pool, and be there tranced and transfixed for hours - treading water, most of the time!
Yes! We were blissfully unaware of time’s wing’d chariot so ‘disrespectfully’ flitting us by, this quick-o-quick! 😋
Added, we were allowed to go on outings in the evenings, only if we had managed to get the Out Pass, duly forwarded by our Warden (Mr. Parthiban) and signed by our Head Master.
This particular day, my maternal aunt (Shuba Chithi) had come all the way to take me out for my short yet blessed outing to the nearby Alsa Mall! So here was I ‘scouting for the signs’ (their signatures)! 😍
Today also happened to be the Orientation Day 1994 for all of us Freshers, which was followed by a sumptuous festive dinner!
Inland letters that were addressed to us, were hand-delivered to us the same evening, by one Mr. Muthu! Today I got a letter from Amma & Appa stating that they would be coming down to see me the next day (Saturday).
‘Memories are small islands in a sea of forgetting’, says Astrid Erll.
As such, these are the only few ‘experiences’ that proved diary-worthy for me for that particular day, back then, as a teenager, even while the rest of the vast treasure-trove of experiences for that day, are probably deeply there somewhere, but for now, in a third space that’s regally ensconced between oblivion and forgetting!
Astrid Erll hence adds on to say - and I quote - 👇
In processing our experience of reality, forgetting is the rule and remembering the exception!’
Remembering and forgetting are two sides – or different processes – of the same coin, that is, memory. Forgetting is the very condition for remembering.
Total recall, after all, the complete memory of every single event in the past, would amount to total forgetting, for the individual as well as for the group or society. Friedrich Nietzsche had emphasized this as long ago as his 1874 critique of historicism, On the Use and Abuse of History.
Forgetting is necessary for memory to operate economically, for it to be able to recognize patterns.
It is true that memories are small islands in a sea of forgetting.
In processing our experience of reality, forgetting is the rule and remembering the exception.
Indeed, the functions of forgetting within cognitive and social systems are at least as important as those of remembering.
Memory studies has reconstructed the intellectual history of forgetting – for Harald Weinrich, in his rich study Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting (2004), it has its origin in Greco-Roman mythology with the image of the underworld river Lethe – and emphasized the social, historical, and ethical significance of forgetting and related aspects, such as amnesia, oblivion, silence, and forgiving!
For more on this past blog post, you may want to read it in its entirety, HERE!
No comments:
Post a Comment