Memory for whatever number, Alex!

"I have never jotted down birthdays in any calendar, and have always operated from memory .... but, I suppose getting older means that some of the particulars fade away ... now, all I can remember is that your birthday is sometime about now"

That's how I began the birthday greetings to my old high school friend.

It is amazing how much my brain does not want to deal with fine detail anymore.  There once was a time, not too long ago, when I was actually, seriously, interested in the specifics.  Now, it is almost like I have a different brain altogether.  The other day, when I turned the television on, there was a movie. I recognized the actor. An old actor. A male actor. Also a director. Made some real good movies. And he has made plenty of appearances on television shows too.

The old me, er, the younger me that is, would not even have thought about this. Almost as a reflex, I would have remarked, "oh, Sydney Pollack."

Not the same anymore.  However, this does not bother me one bit.  Because, I am convinced that it is not short-term or long-term memory issue but changing priorities.  The name Sydney Pollack itself is not important anymore.  Life is not a game of Jeopardy!  As simple as that.

Similarly, it does not bother me that that I could not recall my old friend's date of birth.  I am way more delighted with the old memories.  Of friendship. Of the growing up angst.  Of the nerdy and stupid things we talked about way back when as we biked around town.

Growing older is wonderful that way--it is like sifting life through a sieve and the brain then figures out what is important enough to retain.  Instant recall is no longer an urgency.  The stories are what matter.  Good stories. Bad ones. Tough ones. Hilarious ones. Tragic ones.  Stories nonetheless.

The focus on the story and the sifting away of finer details like names or numbers means that slowly the stories morph in the retellings.  When I was younger, it was fun for us kids to even point out the inconsistencies in my grandmother's stories, to which her response often was தப்ப பிடிச்சு வாயில போடு (literally translating to "catch the mistakes and put them in my mouth" to imply that we kids had nothing better to do than do something that silly.)

I wonder how my own stories will morph as I get old and tell them again for the hundredth time.  One such story is about the number of gulab jamuns that I had in one sitting, during my undergraduate days.  I had, count 'em, twenty-two.  And it was after an all-you-can-eat lunch at our favorite Gujarati restaurant.  I can imagine that as I get older, the city name changing from Coimbatore to Calcutta; from my undergrad days to when I started working, from twenty-two to twenty-seven, and even gulab jamuns becoming rasagollas.  But, dammit, I will have stories. And they will be mine.

And, to make things easy, maybe I will begin to wish people happy birthday on the first of every January.