Who is the audience?

"I have a question," he said.

Back in the day, in the work environment, I would have immediately responded with something like "I have five answers of which eight are incorrect."  All that is rapidly receding in the rear view mirror of life.

"Are you going to start working on your memoirs?  That's what most retired people seem to do."

So, that was the question!

Chances are that he is not aware of my autoethnographic thinking and writing, which makes most of what I write about practically qualify as memoirs.  

Rare is a week when I don't bring into the writing observations on my own life--present and past--and the lives of my parents and grandparents.  This introspective autoethnography helps me make sense of my life, my existence.  An existence in which there is a clear beginning and an undefined ending.  To make meaning of the muddled and noisy part between the beginning and the end is a joyful activity.

I didn't want to get into a discussion of autoethnography either.  I certainly did not want to lecture about all these.

Instead, I pointed the index finger at him, suggesting that I was in on the joke.  A hearty laugh was my response.

He too smiled.

When regular people like me write their memoirs, the most common reason is that future generations might want to know about generations past.  Perhaps so.  But, one doesn't need written memoirs for that purpose. 

The rich understanding that I have about my past, through generations of my people in Sengottai, was not from anything written.  In fact, there is no documentation.

My people, retired or not, did not write memoirs. The elders were all too happy to talk about the old stories.  From their lives.  From the lives of people in the extended family.  Happy stories.  Sad stories.  Uplifting ones.  Depressing ones. 

Oral memoirs they were, but only if others were eager to listen.

I have listened to plenty of family stories.  I have always been a sucker for those.  At this point, there is very little that my parents or aunts can tell me something new.

I suppose the question remains: Would it not be useful if I wrote down in my memoirs the experiences from my life and from the lives of the elders?

To which I have a counter-question: Why would anybody be interested in my memoirs anyway?  Other than my parents, that is.

Over the years, I have compiled my thoughts and mailed them to my parents, who do not read my blog.  My father has meticulously numbered the collections.  The last of those was six years ago.  "This is the ninth volume" my father said after he received it.  

What he said after that was valuable to me: "This is the one that made me think the most because it was philosophical and it involved plenty of old family stories. In fact, it even upset me." 

Understandable.  After all, my memoirs are his as well.  And my mother's.  And my grandparents'.